Why Victor GYOKERES is PERFECT STRIKER for ARSENAL 🤯
It is quite rare that a football player's name outside the top 5 leagues makes headlines all over Europe. However, Victor Gyökeres is an exception! And today we will tell you about the phenomenon of this Viking and which world football giants will sign the forward in the summer!
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Origins
Viktor Gyökeres is a Swede, so he started his professional career in his homeland at IF Brommapojkarna. In the 2016/17 season, the 18-year-old striker scored 15 goals and made 9 assists in 35 matches for his club, which caught the attention of bigger teams.
Brighton showed the most persistence, and signed Victor in the summer of 2017 for 1 million euros. For the small IF Brommapojkarna, this transfer was the second largest in the club's history at that time, so the Swedes were happy.
And the fact that Brighton noticed the forward means that they really saw something in him. The Seagulls have long been famous for their scouting department, which brings top talent to the team every season for relatively little money by English standards.
Caicedo, Mac Allister, White, Bissouma, Mitoma, Bounanotte, Adingra, Ferguson, Enciso - all of them would later shine in the Premier League with Brighton.
However, things did not go so well for Gyökeres in the south of England. He spent two seasons in the second team of Brighton, and sometimes got on the bench in the first team. Then there were a few loans: German St. Pauli and Swansea in the Championship.
Gyökeres played 8 matches for Brighton in all this time, in which he scored only 1 goal. And even that one was the 4th in the Seagulls' crushing victory over Portsmouth in the FA Cup.
The real salvation for the Swede was a loan to the Championship side Coventry, which he joined in January 2021. Despite the fact that Gyökeres scored only 3 goals in half of the season, they saw the potential in him and decided to buy the striker for €1.2 million.
And then it started! Viktor began to repay his new club for their trust the very next season. During the 2021/22 campaign, he scored 18 goals and made 5 assists in 47 matches in all competitions. Impressive progress compared to his first years in England.
But there was more to come. The following season, a small club from the city of Coventry, near Birmingham, with Gyökeres at the heart of the attack, broke into a real battle for the Premier League.
Victor was unstoppable. That season, he surpassed his previous year's performance and scored 22 goals and provided 12 assists in 50 matches of the season. At the end of the campaign, Coventry made it to the playoffs for promotion to the Premier League, but lost in the final to another sensation Luton Town in a penalty shootout.
Gyökeres became the second highest scorer in the Championship, behind only Chuba Akpom. After his club failed to win a promotion to the Premier League, it became clear that they would not be able to keep the striker.
Everton and West Ham were actively interested in him, but Victor chose a rather extraordinary option to continue his career - he went to Portugal to play for Sporting, who broke their transfer record to invite the striker. Lisbon paid 21 million euros for the Swede. However, they obviously realized what a monster they would get for this money.
And as for Coventry, the club was also satisfied with the transfer - they received almost 20 times more for their striker than they paid for him two years ago.
This transfer caused quite a buzz for a number of reasons. Firstly, the fact that a player moves from the Championship to the Portuguese league is quite unusual. Secondly, Portuguese clubs rarely pay such big money for a player. And thirdly, a Scandinavian footballer in Portugal is a kind of exotic.
Usually, when it comes to foreign players in The Primeira Liga, it's mostly Latin Americans and Africans. And even if it's someone from Europe, it's usually players from neighboring countries like Spain or France. But having a Swede in Sporting was quite surprising.
Like this video if you hadn't heard much about Viktor Gyökeres before this season, and now he has become a real discovery for you.
Sporting wonders
Usually, if a player goes to Portugal, the first thing he seeks is to play for Benfica or Porto. Sporting was the third power in the country, and in the first 20 years of this century, they won the Portuguese league only once. All other titles were shared between Benfica and Porto.
However, all this changed when Ruben Amorim took over Sporting and won the league in his first full season. Also, in the previous two seasons, Sporting won the Taça da Liga twice, the equivalent of the Carabao Cup in England.
It was under Amorim that players such as Pedro Porro, João Palinha, Mateus Nunes or Nuno Mendes shone. So knew very well the kind of coach he was going to. Besides, Sporting were planning to fight for the title again.
20 мар 2024
