The Swede hopes to finish a spectacular rise from the Championship to the very top echelons of the European game.
Coventry City to Sporting CP is hardly a well-trodden path for footballers, but following Viktor Gyokeres’ success this season, a few more Sky Blues players may be pushing their representatives for a similar move in the summer.
At the close of last season, the Swede defied conventional wisdom by forsaking Premier League riches to try his luck in Portugal. However, if stories are to be accepted, Gyokeres will soon return to England.
This time, he will not play in the second tier; he has scored far too many goals at Sporting for that to be the case. Instead, Arsenal and Chelsea are interested in signing him this summer.
He won’t come cheap, though. Recognising how much a top-tier No.9 is worth these days, his current release clause is a stunning €100 million (£86 million/$109 million), though Sporting are thought to be ready to extend it to €120 million (£103 million/$130 million) by offering him a new deal.
No matter how you spin it, these are enormous sums; is Gyokeres worth it? GOAL has conducted a thorough dive into his career thus far to discover:
Born in the Stockholm on June 4, 1998, Gyokeres began his footballing journey at minnows IFK Aspudden-Tellus. After impressing there, he was spotted by IF Brommapojkarna – who proudly boast of being Europe’s largest football club in terms of all-age participants.
He progressed swiftly through the ranks, making his senior debut aged 18 against Ostersunds, who were being managed by Graham Potter at the time. Gyokeres remained in the first team’s thinking by scoring bucket loads of goals for the Under-19s and Under-21s, and by the time the 2015-16 season rolled around, he had properly broken into the senior ranks.
The following year, however, was his genuine breakout season, with Gyokeres’ performances prompting interest from Brighton. After the transfer was confirmed, he waved farewell to the Swedish team in style, scoring a hat-trick on the final day as they won the second-tier title.
Gyokeres revealed after joining with Brighton that he expected to start off with the U23s. “The club has stated that when I start, I will work with the reserve team. They will most likely consider me an initial U23 player, but it is entirely up to me. However, I don’t feel stressed. “You should focus on where you are and nowhere else,” he said in an interview with STV Sport.
Gyokeres’ prediction was correct too, even if he did star at the 2017 European U19 Championship just before arriving at Brighton. During his four years on the south coast, he mustered just eight appearances, all of which came in cup competitions. His development was instead supplemented by loans to St Pauli, Swansea and Coventry, and during this latter spell, he did enough to convince the Sky Blues to take a chance and sign him permanently.
