So… listen to this… every hardcore football fan has become obsessed with the way Brighton signs new players… because one way or another they seem to just pull these world class players out of thin air like they have a crystal ball or something… They have the most overpowered scouting team in the premier league and that they barely ever make any mistakes… which is exactly what makes this story so much more interesting… because the one mistake they made, the one good player they let go off might have been the very best to ever step foot at their club… If you haven’t heard about him yet, this is Viktor Gyokeres… and he’s an absolute freak of a footballer… In the last 15 years, the portuguese league has brought you Pepe, Di Maria, Nani, Coentrão, James, Falcao, Hulk, Bernardo, Oblak, Ederson, Felix, Leão, Bruno, Raphinha, Militão, Enzo, Nunez… It’s a seemingly infinite pool of ridiculous talent and still… I can’t stop myself from seeing Gyokeres as maybe the most exciting of all… 50 matches, 43 goals and 14 assists… the most goal contributions in the entire world… this guy arrived in Portugal and took 5 player of the month awards in a row … In Sweden, they already talk about him as the new Zlatan Ibrahimovic… Portuguese newspapers can’t stop mentioning how much he reminds them of Ronaldo… and personally, he reminds me a lot of a pre injury Lukas Podolski… which… is a scary thought considering that Gyokeres never seems to get injured… Honestly, he might just be the scariest player I’ve ever seen in this league… Not only is he physically imposing, capable of taking on any center back, but no matter his size, he’s still freakishly fast and capable with his feet… The outcome is a player who can created more chances than the league’s best playmakers, who can score more goals than the best target men and take on 1v1, often even 1v2 situations, as well as the best wingers available… as one newspaper put it, he’s a “transition demon”, a frankenstein footballer, an Ivan Drgo look alike who seems like he came straight out of a lab… and still, we gotta ask the question… How exactly did this guy get to 26 years of age, playing right under the noses of all the Premier League greats and still leave without anyone noticing? Even now… How has no one triggered his release clause? Look, to show you just how much Brighton messed up… we gotta go back to the 17th of September 2020… Brighton were playing 3rd division Portsmouth for the second round of the Carabao Cup… for all intents and purposes this was kind of a meaningless match… but in a way that’s what made it so special in retrospect, because with the stakes being so low… Graham Potter fielded a lot of players who otherwise would not get much of a chance to play… and among those names, two stood out… Viktor Gyokeres and Alexis MacAllister… At the time, they were both 23 years old, had both played less than 10 matches for the club and that day they each scored their first goal for Brighton, in fact Gyokeres even got an assist as well… But while MacAllister’s goal allowed him to get called back for the next league cup match and then to slowly get introduced into the starting eleven, taking over the team and being sold to Liverpool for a fortune just 3 years later… Gyokeres experienced the exact opposite… 2 weeks later he had already been loaned out and without ever stepping foot in a premier league match, he would never again play for Brighton… but why were the two players treated so differently?
Well if you really look at each of their famous signings… they appear out of thin air… MacAllister was already doing well at Boca Juniors, Buonanotte came from Rosario Central, Trossard was amazing at Genk, Mitoma was on route to play Champions League football with Saint Gilloise… In fact, a lot of their best players, like Gilmour, Lamptey and Wellbeck came straight from top clubs like Arsenal, United and Chelsea, but Gyokeres? Well… as one of his coaches at Brighton would admit: “We found it hard to believe the club had unearthed such a talent straight from the Swedish second tier without facing any competition”. .
. to a certain point, you can’t really blame them… Gyokeres really had come out of nowhere… Back before that, his only ever transfer, if you can even call it that, came when he was scouted at 15 years of age by Brommapojkarna… If you never heard of them, well… that isn’t exactly surprising, they were one of the worst teams in the Swedish league… In fact, even though it took less than 2 years for Gyokeres to get promoted to their first team… By then, they had already gotten relegated after one of the worst league campaigns you’ll ever see… Just 12 points from 30 matches… even the second worst team had more than twice their points… You could argue that they weren’t even good enough for the second tier at the time… and you know what, you’d be right… The next year, even with Gyokeres getting his first few minutes for the team, they finished last place once more, winning only 5 matches all year… Suddenly, Gyokeres was approaching his 19th birthday and when he should’ve been following in the footsteps of Zlatan, maybe getting a move to Malmo or you know… one of the top clubs in Sweden… Instead, he was in the third tier of a league where it’s already hard to get some time in the spotlight… Regardless, as you can imagine, that did not stop him… he just dragged them back to the top… Right there, even if he was only just being introduced into the team, he still managed to finish his first full season with a stretch of 7 goals in 11 matches, that not only helped get the club back up to the second tier, but already made him their second highest goalscorer and most likely earned him a call up to the Swedish under 19 national team where once again he immediately left his mark, scoring against Italy to qualify them to the Euros… After all of that, obviously, Brommapojkarna realized he would be their ticket back to the first tier and before you knew it, he had become the star of the team, starting off the league season with 13 goal contributions in 14 league matches, then going away for the Euros and doing an absolute madness… Sweden went out in the group stage, without a single win and still in a tournament where players like Rafael Leão, Mason Mount and Jota all played more matches than Gyokeres… he still came out as the top scorer… getting a goal in every game he played… And of course, once back in his country, he completed his mission, not only leading his team to yet another title, scoring a hat trick in the final match day, but also making sure to score the goal that would put them in the semi finals of the swedish cup against all the odds… And if for a second you doubted that Gyokeres really had been responsible for the team’s rebirth… then let me tell you that it was right after this, that he left… and almost immediately Brommapojkarna ended up getting relegated twice in a row… again… they were nothing without him… Regardless, he was finally at Brighton and the first sort of problem to come up was that Gyokeres was sent straight to the under 23’s and though this is not inherently wrong… I mean, they did the same to Fofana and that worked out… Well, back then, Brighton’s under-23’s weren’t even in the first division… and though Gyokeres performed every time, scoring 11 goals in his first 12 appearances for them, leading them to promotion… and then keeping it all up in the first division… After one full year at the club’s academy, even if he was already playing his first few games for the Swedish national team… Brighton were still yet to figure out what was his best position, constantly going back and forth between playing on the wing or as a striker and even worse…. it still didn’t seem like there would be a place for him in the first team any time soon… allowing him only 91 minutes of playing time across that whole year… And then to add to add fuel to the fire, Graham Potter replaced Chris Hughton as the club’s manager and with the team switching to a new game style that in the opinion of the staff just didn’t fit Gyokeres, the under 23s head coach recommended that they loan him out and soon… he was going straight to St Pauli, in the German second tier… but again this was especially frustrating because even if he performed quite well there, with 11 goal contributions in around 16 hundreds minutes of game time, once he made it back, you again got the feeling they didn’t even consider keeping him in the first team… as it was right then that the whole situation with MacAllister went down… While every other player that showed some promise was given a shot, Gyokeres was sent on yet another loan, this time to Swansea where he hit the lowest point of his career… testing positive for Covid, then seriously struggling with long term symptoms, never really getting back to full fitness and watching as his move got canceled less than 4 months after arriving at the club… unjustly killing any remaining belief Brighton had in his progression… Thankfully, the thing about hitting rock bottom is that you can only go up from there and that’s exactly where Coventry City comes in… You see, they had just gotten promoted to the Championship, so they felt they had nothing to lose in giving Gyokeres the chance he was so desperate for and with his performances over the rest of the season not exactly blowing anyone’s mind, once they offered Brighton 1 million euros for his permanent signing… they took it… after 2 and a half years of waiting for his talent to develop even they began doubting their own scouting department… little did they know that their problem was exactly that… that they had been waiting rather than acting… Meanwhile, at Coventry, this bet wasn’t as innocent as it may have seemed from the outside… Over those 5 months, Gyokeres had built a close relationship with manager Mark Robins… who had played as a striker at the likes of Man United and Man City… and you know what they say: it takes one to know one… Robins was maybe the first to realize that Gyokeres had everything to become a predator and as the man himself would tell the press: “It’s good to finally have someone who understands me”.
. . And rightfully, from there on out, he blossomed… 11 goal contributions in the first 11 matches of the season and the moment Zlatan injured his knee and had to miss the world cup qualifiers, there was no doubt… Gyokeres would be the one tasked with filling his shoes… But still, by the end of the season, even with 21 goal contributions in the Championship and some of the most incredible clutch performances in the country… He was being labeled a one season wonder… At times it almost felt like it was Gyokers against the world… The guy could never catch a break… but that made him relentless and the next season, he made sure no one would ever say those words again… With the new season starting, Gyokeres seemed to improve every single month… In September, he was involved in one goal, in October he made that 3, by November he brought that up to 4, in December he doubled down… And from February onwards, with Coventry sitting at 11th place and needing a miracle if they wanted to make it to the promotion play offs… Gyokeres hit cruise speed… 15 goals contributions in 15 matches across 2 and a half months… Coventry had only lost one single game since February… and to the shock of every one they had secured a 5th place finish… their highest finish since their relegation from the Premier League 22 years before… and once Gyokeres assisted their only goal in the play off semi finals, the only thing between them and a comeback to the top of english football… was Luton Town… and after Coventry went behind early into the match, guess who assisted the decisive goal… Viktor Gyokeres… Still, after 120 minutes on the battlefield, it all came down to penalties and though Gyokeres scored his… Coventry lost in sudden death and Chuba Akpom beat him to the player of the season award… but as one newspaper had said before the match: “Whatever the result, there’s one man you feel cannot lose and that’s Viktor Gyokeres”.
. . because in everyone’s eyes he was already the winner… His 12 assists put him on top of the charts, his 21 goals made the Championship’s second highest goalscorer and in seemingly every advanced stat, from progressive carries to shot creating actions and successful take ons… he came out on top.
. . And so, with a handful of premier league clubs coming for his signing, Gyokeres with only one year left in his contract and Coventry stuck in the Championship… a transfer seemed unavoidable, but as he made up his mind between Everton, Wolves, Crystal Palace and Fulham… Sporting CP showed up… offering a club record 20 million euros for his signing, as well as 4 million in bonuses and a 5% profit share whenever they end up selling him… In other words, Sporting saw a true phenomenon and threw at them everything they had in exchange for the opportunity to have him in Lisbon… because if there was one thing they needed desperately was goals… They had only been able to outscore either of their rivals, Porto and Benfica, once in the previous 15 years… But then… Then Gyokeres arrived… On his league debut, he scored twice, on his europa league debut, he scored again, on his league cup debut, he scored a hat trick and on his portuguese cup debut, he scored and assisted… as one newspaper wrote: “The most shocking thing about Gyokeres is his endless hunger, destroying every opponent who comes in his way and treating everyone equally… May it be an european game or a cup game, Gyokeres will not stop”.
. . and they meant that… by February, not only had he taken the league’s player of the month award 5 times in a row… quite literally winning every single one since his arrival… but he had already hit 25 goals for Sporting… blowing past one of the clauses in his contract and forcing the club to pay an extra million euros to Coventry.
. . and, let me tell you, if, for even a second, you thought of pinning this on the portuguese league’s supposed lack of quality… I guess I should warn you that at that point, his best performance of the season had not come against some random no-name team… no, it came against Porto where the one man-marking Gyokeres was no other than Pepe… you know, the 3 times Champions League winner… and, as much as it hurts me to say, Gyokeres did not struggle… he scored 10 minutes into the game, after making Pepe look like a ragdoll, then scored again 30 minutes later, only getting the goal disallowed by VAR due to something that was completely out of his control… and finally going on a 60 yard run all the way up the pitch, getting one on one with the keeper, playing it out to a teammate, killing the match and completely justifying however much more money they’d have to spend on him… with their manager Ruben Amorin even telling the press that: “Gyokeres did not become one million more expensive, he became one million cheaper” because after all, even with one-of performances to the side… well… remember their whole problem with goalscoring?
At that point, Sporting wasn’t just outscoring one, but both of their rivals, though… Gyokeres… wasn’t even close to done… Right from that moment on, he went on a run of 10 goals and 3 assists in 12 matches, only once playing a full 90 without getting his name on the scoresheet and even then, when, just a few weeks later… he was put in doubt for their second league match against Porto… not only did he end up making it to the bench, but with Sporting two goals behind, they brought him in regardless… and I kid you not… he scored to bring one back in the 87th minute and less than a minute after that, he had already scored the equalizer… not to mention that the following match, he scored another and suddenly… Sporting were champions… and it wasn’t even that it was only their second league title in over 20 years, or that they were leading by 10 points, their best finish since 1950… no, what shocked me the most was that they were on 96 goals… 19 more than Benfica, 33 more than Porto and 23 more than their best tally of the 21st century… long gone were the claims that Sporting couldn’t get numbers on the scoresheet and it was very clearly thanks to the fact that Gyokeres had completely demolished the goalscoring charts… You could take all 3 of Porto’s top scorers, Evanilson, Galeno and Tarehmi… and still, all together, they had 28 league goals… you could do the same for Benfica, get Rafa Silva, Di Maria and Kokcu… and they’d total 30 goals… meanwhile… Gyokeres, all by himself, was on 29… it wasn’t even up for discussion who the player of the year was… and still, after a summer where shockingly no one had the decency to pay up and get this monster away from my country… now he’s already on 19 goal contributions… and it’s only been a month and a half since the season started… meaning that if, impossibly, he somehow keeps going at this rate… he’ll finish the year with 103 goal contributions… matching Messi’s best ever season and… if that isn’t enough to make you scared of this villain, guess why he always does that one celebration? Because, as he explained it himself… “no one cared who I was until I put on the mask”. .
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