Viktor Gyokeres: Sporting CP's own version of Erling Haaland faces Manchester City with an outstanding goal series | Football News

Erling Haaland starts most games as the top goalscorer on the pitch. The Manchester City striker will have to settle for second place for Tuesday's trip to Sporting CP.

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

These are phenomenal numbers from the 26-year-old, who also has 45 goals in 43 Portuguese top-flight games 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 struggled in the Championship just four years ago.

Gyokeres was on loan from Brighton, where a talented player is often discovered in Europe. In the 2020/21 season, Gyokeres remained goalless in eleven second division games for Steve Cooper's Swansea.

Fresh from a promising loan spell at German second division side St. Pauli, it was disappointing. Midway through the season, his spell with the Swans was cut short and he was loaned out again to Coventry City.

Three goals in 19 games in the second half of the season led to a debate within the Coventry hierarchy: was he good enough to sign permanently or was he not worth the risk? This question seems silly now.

“I think you could have argued on both sides, to be honest,” says former Coventry assistant coach Adi Viveash Sky Sports. “One 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. With all due respect, he never got a kick out of it. Kyle McFadzean marked him the game!

“When he went out on loan in the second six months of this season he still had the same frustrations with us. He was a very different player to the one he ultimately left Coventry as. Not as strong, not as powerful. He might be a little bit pushed off the ball.

“I had the feeling at the time that he didn’t play the central role well. He still wanted to go further afield. Avoid a little contact, I suppose, with your back to the goal. That’s what it looked like.”

The idea that Gyokeres was once an easy player to take the ball away from is baffling given his current level. His two Champions League goals this season were remarkably similar: solo runs down the left, defending and charging from a defender, then a masterful finish.

So what happened to this struggling striker who has now suddenly catapulted himself to Haaland-like levels? When Gyokeres looks back on his career, he will see the fact that Coventry made the loan deal permanent for less than a million pounds in the summer of 2021 as a springboard for his confidence.

“It was almost like signing a different player,” recalls Viveash. “The next season he came with the confidence of being bought by a team and suddenly he was told he would be the main man. And he looked like the main character.”

“He's built up, he's obviously worked hard in the gym in the off-season and the contacts with his back to the goal? He started smashing centre-backs around in training! And it was a real eye-opener for everyone to have us say, 'Okay, this kid is serious now'.”

Three goals in 30 championship games turned into 38 goals in 91 games over the next two seasons at Coventry. His 21 goals in the second division in the 2022/23 season not only caught the attention of Sporting, but also almost led the Sky Blues to the Premier League. Only a defeat to Luton Town in the Championship play-off final belied that reality, with Gyokeres even getting a first-class assist for Coventry's equalizer at Wembley.

“You know when someone is feeling good, don’t you?” says Viveash. “If the opponents want to talk about him. After every game you went into the manager’s room and Vik was the name that was mentioned.”

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

Coventry were the team that developed Gyokeres into the all-round center forward we see today. As seen in the first and last goals against Estrela Amadora, similar to his two Champions League goals so far this season, the Swedish striker likes to attack or move away from the left wing to create scoring opportunities.

“He scored a lot of goals for St. Pauli on the left, a lot of goals,” Viveash remembers. “When he played as No. 9, we wanted him to trust his teammate to come into the left space and he could attack the front or middle zone. He ended up scoring some really good goals.”

“So we tried to make sure he went both right and left so he was kind of drifting along the top three.”

Not only is he a goalscorer, the 26-year-old also has 11 assists and 74 chances to score in 43 league games for Sporting since joining the club just over a year ago.

But Coventry also prepared him for the expectations of a top club expecting a win. When Gyokeres got good, the championship got good too. Both the player and the club had to deal with the transition from league underdogs to teams crumbling into a low bloc.

“His ability to run and keep running is what sets him apart in the Championship because other teams' strikers could make three or four brilliant runs but he managed 12, 13, 14,” says Viveash.

“If you give Vik half a pitch with a high line and the line is wrong, you'll never catch him because he'll keep running back into the background.”

“In the championship the defense started to weaken. So he had to set them up and then he had to do a lot to score goals. We knew we had a physical machine, in the end it was about refining the work.” Creating space.

“So I worked with him a lot in tight areas. It took a lot of persuasion to get him to understand this and accept it. He's one of those players where it took him quite a long time to realize the benefit of why.”

This was because Gyokeres had his own personality. Firstly, the shy striker at the start of his time at Coventry became an obsessive goalscorer with a pure desire to succeed.

“Vik loved having a bag of balls alone every day and you had to get him in because he was out as soon as it was dark,” Viveash remembers. “He did a lot of things from a rebound board and then finished. I think he’s definitely improved his left foot with things like that.”

“He would also be frustrated if he went three or four games without a goal. It was a difficult time for him in all seasons, particularly the two seasons in which he played regularly at Coventry.”

But then an ego began to develop in Coventry as goals kept coming. The Swedish striker felt he was overtaking Coventry and now one could say he is doing the same at Sporting.

“He grunted a lot,” added Coventry’s former assistant coach. “Me and him had a really interesting working relationship because I am a very ambitious coach and demand a lot and he is a very ambitious personality who demands a lot.”

“Vik wanted to do training sessions the way Vik wanted to work. He wanted to finish at a certain point, he wanted to do this, he wanted to do that. He had a strong character, a strong personality and if you wanted it.” When two of you are like that, you have to find a way to communicate with each other.

“Sometimes we clashed, actually for each other's benefit, but over time he definitely understood his worth. In many of these games he was almost unplayable in the championship.”

“But towards the end of that season there were frustrations and things going on around him, maybe that's when his head turned.”

“He became quite difficult. And I think he would be honest about that. He became quite difficult to work with when it came to training every day.”

According to Viveash, Gyokeres' move eventually came despite Coventry “doing everything they could” to keep him. “He never intended to play in the Championship again,” added the deputy head coach. The striker's last game for the club was the Championship play-off final defeat against Luton.

It took him to Sporting, then the Champions League and then 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 to see how he fares against that kind of centre-back,” says Viveash.

“But if City play the way they do then that’s brilliant, but if they stay 1v1 at the back then that’s going to be interesting. How far did he get against the best?”

“But he definitely has the strength, the running ability and the confidence that strikers need to have to be a No. 9 in the Premier League and at the top clubs. He definitely has all of that and he looks like he has the ability to score goals.”

Tuesday's Champions League game in Lisbon feels like a big stage for Gyokeres. Can he really be comparable to Haaland? If this is the case, a move away from Sporting is likely, with City even a possible destination.

Remember, remember the fifth of November. The day Haaland met his match?