Viktor Gyokeres: Sporting CP’s own version of Erling Haaland faces Manchester City amid stellar scoring | Football news

Erling Haaland started many games as the top scorer on the pitch. For Tuesday’s trip to Sporting CP, the Manchester City forward will have to settle for second place.

Haaland has 17 goals in 18 games for club and country this season, but that is nothing compared to Sporting striker Viktor Gyokeres, who has 24 goals in 20.

These are phenomenal numbers from the 26-year-old, who also boasts 45 goals in 43 Portuguese top-flight games since his move to Sporting at the start of last season. But it’s even more surprising because this is the same striker who struggled in the Championship as he did four years ago.

On loan from Brighton, who tend to look for talented players in Europe, Gyokeres kept a clean sheet in 11 second-tier appearances for Steve Cooper’s Swansea in the 2020-21 season.

Fresh from a promising loan spell at German second division side St Pauli, it was disappointing. His Swans spell was cut short midway through the campaign and he was given another loan spell at Coventry City.

Three goals in 19 games in the second half of the season sparked a debate among the Coventry hierarchy: is he good enough to sign permanently or is it too risky? The question seems ridiculous now.

“I think you can argue both sides, to be honest,” said former Coventry assistant manager Adi Viveash. Sky Sports. “You could have said: it’s a bit of gambling?

“He went to Swansea with Steve Cooper on loan at the start of the season. The next time I saw him was when we played in the Covid year. With all due respect, he never kicked. Kyle McFadzean marked him out of the game!

“On loan for the second six months of the season, he still has the same frustration as us. He is a very different player to what he ended up leaving Coventry. Not strong, not strong. He can be a little bit shoved out the ball a bit.

“I don’t think he plays the central role very well. He still wants to fly into wide areas. Avoids a little contact, of course, with his back to the goal. That’s how it is.”

The idea that Gyokeres was once a player who could easily attack the ball is confusing given his current level. His two Champions League goals this season are almost identical: a solo run down the left, straight forward and past a defender, then a clinical finish.

So what happened to the struggling striker, who suddenly rose to his current Haaland-esque level? As Gyokeres looks back on his career, he will see Coventry sign a permanent loan deal for less than £1m in the summer of 2021 as a springboard for confidence.

“It’s almost as if you’ve stepped into a different player,” recalls Viveash. “The next season he came in convinced he was going to be bought by the team, and all of a sudden he was told he was going to be the main guy. And he looked like the main guy.

“He built himself up, he always worked hard in the fall in the gym, and the contact with the back of the goal? He started smashing the center-back in training! And it was a real eye-opener for all of us to go: ‘Okay, this kid means business today’.”

Three goals in 30 Championship games made it 38 goals in 91 games over the next two seasons at Coventry. 21 goals in the second tier in the 2022-23 season not only grabbed Sporting’s attention – but almost took the Sky Blues into the Premier League. Only defeat to Luton Town in the Championship play-off final belied that fact, Gyokeres even getting a fine assist for Coventry’s equalizer at Wembley.

“You know there are good people out there, right?” said Viveash. “When the opposition want to talk about him. After every game, you go into the manager’s room and Vik is the name that is mentioned.

“I don’t think anyone has seen a striker like that in the Championship. And he just improves every aspect of the game.”

Coventry is the team that made Gyokeres the center forward we all see today. As seen in his first and last strike against Estrela Amadora, equal to two goals in the Champions League so far this season, the Swedish striker likes to attack or switch from the left wing to get scoring opportunities.

“He scored so many goals from the left like this for St Pauli, so many goals,” Viveash recalled. “When he plays as No 9, we want him to believe that his teammates will come to the left and that he can attack the front or central zone. In the end, he scored some very good goals.

“So we tried to make sure he went right as well as left, so he ran in the front three.”

He didn’t just score goals either, the 26-year-old also had 11 assists and 74 chances created in 43 league games for Sporting since joining the club more than a year ago.

But Coventry is also preparing him for the expectations of a top club hoping to win. When Gyokeres became good, so did the Championship. The players and the club have to deal with the transition from a league that can’t be underestimated to a broken team in a low block.

“His ability to run and keep going is what sets him apart in the Championship, because the strikers in other teams, might produce three or four good runs, but he will do 12, 13, 14,” said Viveash.

“If you give Vik a half pitch with a high line and you line up wrong, you’re not going to be able to catch him because he’s going to keep running behind him.

“In the Championship, the defense started to collapse. So they had to receive quickly and then they had to do a lot to get goals. We know that we have a physical machine, finally sharpening that work. creating space.

“So I do a lot of work with them in tight areas. It takes a lot of cajoling to get them to understand and buy in. .”

That’s because Gyokeres has its own personality. The initially shy striker at the start of his time at Coventry became an obsessive goalscorer with a passion for success.

“Vik liked to have his own ball bag every day and you had to come in because he would come out after dark,” recalls Viveash. “He’s going to do a lot of things on the rebound board and finish.

“He will also be frustrated if he goes three or four games without a goal. It’s been a difficult time for him all season, especially the two he played regularly at Coventry.”

But then the ego started to grow at Coventry as the goals kept flying in. The Swedish striker felt he was beyond Coventry and can now back him to do the same at Sporting.

“He grumbled a lot,” added the former Coventry assistant coach. “Me and him, we have an interesting working relationship, because I am a coach who is very passionate and demands a lot, and he is a very personal person, demanding a lot.

“Vik wants to do the training session the way Vik wants it. He wants to finish it in a certain time, he wants to do this, he wants to do it. He has a strong character, a strong personality and when you get two people like that, then you have to find way to communicate.

“And you’re going to be terrible, for each other’s sake, but he’s certainly realized his worth as time goes on. He’s almost unplayable in the Championship in a lot of those games.

“But at the end of the season, there were frustrations and things around him as individuals, maybe that’s when he turned his head.

“He’s been really tough. And I think he’s going to be honest with him. He’s been really tough to work with in terms of trying to practice every day.”

Gyokeres eventually secured a move despite Coventry “doing everything they could” to keep him, according to Viveash. “He will never play again in the Championship,” added the assistant boss. The striker’s last game for the club was the Championship play-off final defeat to Luton.

It takes them to Sporting, then the Champions League, then Tuesday’s match with Premier League champions Manchester City.

“It will be interesting because you will be playing against elite elites and it will be interesting how they play against those types of centre-halves,” Viveash said.

“But if City play the same way, great, but if they leave 1v1 behind, it will be interesting. How far have they progressed against the best?

“But he’s certainly got the power, the running ability, the confidence that strikers need to be a No. 9 in the Premier League, and at a top club.

Tuesday’s Champions League match in Lisbon is like a big stage for Gyokeres. Can he match Haaland? If it is, a move away from Sporting appears to be on the cards, with City even a possible place.

Remember, remember the fifth of November. Did Haaland meet his match?