Viktor Gyokeres: Sporting CP’s own version of Erling Haaland faces Manchester City amid a spectacular scoring run | Football News

Erling Haaland starts most matches as the top scorer on the pitch. The Manchester City striker will have to settle for second place in Tuesday’s trip to Sporting CP.

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

These are extraordinary figures for the 26-year-old, who has scored 45 goals in 43 Portuguese top-flight appearances since joining Sporting at the start of last season. But it’s even more impressive when you consider that this is the same striker who competed in the Championship four years ago.

Gyokeres, on loan from Brighton, who tend to spot a talented player in Europe, has been kept goalless in 11 second-tier games for Steve Cooper’s Swansea in the 2020-21 season.

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

Three goals in 19 appearances in the second half of the season sparked a debate among the Coventry hierarchy: was he good enough to sign on a permanent basis, or wasn’t it worth the risk? This question now seems absurd.

“I think you can argue on both sides, to be honest,” said former Coventry assistant manager Adi Viveash. Sky Sports. “You could have said: Is this a bit of a gamble?

“He went to Swansea on loan with Steve Cooper at the start of the season. The next time I saw him was when we played them in the Covid year. I’m sorry but he didn’t get a kick. Kyle McFadzean left him out of the game!

“He still had the same frustrations with us when he was on loan for the second six months of that season. He was a very different player then when he left Coventry. He wasn’t that strong, he wasn’t that powerful. He could have been a bit better.” He was pushed off the ball a little bit.

“I didn’t think he was playing the central role well at the time. He still wanted to drift into wide areas. I guess he just avoided some contact with his back to goal. That’s what it looked like.”

The idea that Gyokeres was once a player who cleared the ball with ease is puzzling given his current levels. The two goals he has scored in the Champions League this season were remarkably similar: he ran alone down the left, intercepted a defender and headed past him, then produced a clinical finish.

So what happened to that combative striker who suddenly rose to Haaland-like levels? When Gyokeres looks back on his career, he will see Coventry making his loan deal permanent in the summer of 2021 for less than £1m as a springboard for his confidence.

“It was like you signed a different player,” Viveash recalls. “He came in confident that he was going to be bought out by a team next season, and all of a sudden he was told he was going to be the leading man. And he looked like the leading man.

“He’s improved, he’s obviously been working hard in the gym in the off-season and he’s making touches with his back to goal? He’s starting to run down defenders in training! And that was a real eye-opener for everyone. One of us said: ‘Okay, this lad’s got a job now’.”

Three goals in 30 Championship games at Coventry became 38 goals in 91 games over the next two seasons. His 21 second-tier goals in the 2022-23 season have not only caught the attention of Sporting, but have also almost propelled the Sky Blues into the Premier League. Only defeat to Luton Town in the Championship play-off final belied this fact; Gyokeres even provided a stylish assist for Coventry’s equalizer at Wembley.

“You know when someone is getting better, right?” Viveash says. “When the opposition wanted to talk about him. After every match you would go to the manager’s office and the name that was talked about was Vik.

“I don’t think anyone has seen a striker like this in the Championship. And he has improved all aspects of his game.”

Coventry were the team that made Gyokeres the versatile center we see today. As seen in his first and last strikes against Estrela Amadora, as well as his two goals in the Champions League this season, the Swedish striker likes to attack or come out down the left wing to create scoring chances.

“He scored a lot of goals from the left for St Pauli, he scored a lot of goals,” Viveash recalls. “Playing as number 9, we wanted him to trust that his teammate could come into the left field and attack the forward or central areas. He ended up scoring some really good goals.

“So we tried to get him to go right as well as left, so he kind of drifted towards the front three.”

He’s not just a striker either; The 26-year-old player has made 11 assists and scored 74 goals in 43 league matches for Sporting since joining the club a year ago.

But Coventry also prepared him for the expectations of a top-flight club that expects to win. When Gyokeres got good, the Championship got better too. Both player and club have had to deal with the transition from the league’s underdogs to tearing down teams in the low block.

“His ability to run and keep running is what set him apart in the Championship, because forwards on other teams could produce three or four spectacular runs, but he made 12, 13, 14,” Viveash says.

“If you give Vik half a step with a high line and you get the line wrong you will never catch him because he will keep running from behind.

“In the Championship the defenses started to collapse. So he had to get up and he had to do a lot to score goals. We knew we had a physical machine, in the end it was difficult to concentrate on creating space.

“That’s why I worked with him a lot in tight areas. It took a lot of convincing to get him to understand and buy into it. He’s one of those players who took quite a long time to see the benefits.”

This was because Gyokeres had his own personality. Firstly, the shy striker at the start of his time at Coventry has evolved into a goal-obsessed striker with a passion for success.

“Vik loved having a bag of balls by himself every day, and when it got dark you had to bring him in because he would go out,” Viveash recalls. “He would do a lot of things on the rebounding board and finish. I think he definitely improved his left foot with things like that.”

“He would also be disappointed if he went three or four games without scoring. That was a difficult time for him in any season, especially in the two seasons when he was a regular at Coventry.”

But then, as the goals started coming one after another at Coventry, an ego began to develop. The Swedish striker felt he had left Coventry behind and it could be argued he is now doing the same at Sporting.

“He grumbled a lot,” adds the former Coventry assistant coach. “We had a really interesting working relationship with him, because I’m a very driven coach and I demand a lot, and he’s a very driven personality and he demands a lot.

“Vik wanted to do the training the way Vik wanted. He wanted to finish at a certain time, he wanted to do this, he wanted to do that. He had a strong character, a strong personality, and if the two of you can be like that, then you have to find a way to communicate.”

“And you would really argue at times for each other’s sake, but as time went on he definitely realized his value. “He was almost unplayable in the Championship for most of those games.

“But towards the end of the season, there were some individual disappointments and things, maybe that’s when he got dizzy.

“He’s become quite difficult. And I think he’s got to be honest about that. He’s become quite difficult to work with in terms of trying to train every day.”

According to Viveash, Gyokeres eventually made his move despite Coventry “doing everything they could” to keep him. “He was never going to play in the Championship again,” the assistant boss adds. The striker’s last game for the club was the Championship play-off final defeat against Luton.

That took him first to Sporting, then to the Champions League and then to Tuesday’s game against Premier League champions Manchester City.

“It will be interesting because then you are playing against the elite of the elite and it would be interesting how he performs against that type of centre-half,” says Viveash.

“But if City play like them it would be great, but if they leave 1v1 behind it would be interesting. “How much progress has he made against the best?

“But he certainly has the strength, the running ability and the confidence that strikers need to be ninth in the Premier League and top clubs. He certainly has all that and he seems to be able to score goals too.”

Tuesday’s Champions League match in Lisbon feels like a big stage for Gyokeres. Can he really be compared to Haaland? If so, there is a possibility he could move away from Sporting, with City even appearing to be a possible target.

Don’t forget, remember November 5th. The day Haaland met his wife?