After a particularly tempestuous week or two in the life of Sporting Clube de Portugal, the forthcoming international window should have heralded calmer waters for a moment or two at least as the post-Rúben Amorim era moves into view. The emotional outpouring of the Manchester United-bound coach’s final game at the Estádio José Alvalade, the debagging of Manchester City, will seem like a few months ago by the middle of next week.
Recent internationals suggest, however, the opposite may be true. If clubs fret over the possibility of star players speaking a little too frankly in their native tongues surrounded by a few home comforts, it is the forthcoming on-pitch deeds of Viktor Gyökeres that threaten to prop up European football’s next salvo of gossip.
Sweden’s third-tier position in Uefa Nations League C is likely to continue to be made a mockery of by the burgeoning strike partnership of Gyökeres and Newcastle’s Alexander Isak. Slovakia and Azerbaijan beware. Whatever challenges await Jon Dahl Tomasson as he attempts to lead Sweden forward, the path is becoming relatively clear. The national team’s hopes of finally moving past the Zlatan Ibrahimovic era will rest on a superstar duo rather than a superstar individual.
Despite the relative statures of Portugal’s Primeira Liga and the Premier League, there is little sense that Gyökeres is the junior partner in this new power couple. Isak is already one of the best strikers in England but everything about Gyökeres suggests that should he join his Sweden teammate here next summer, he can be at least as good.
In many previous transfer windows, the 26-year-old’s stellar first season at Sporting would have already sealed him a Premier League move, but belt-tightening among even the giants of the European game and the Portuguese champions’ intransigence on the €100m (£83m) release clause in Gyökeres’ contract put a hold on that happening in 2024. It was circumstance and a new financial reality, rather than any reflection on his ability to reproduce on a bigger stage.
This summer of stasis might have led to a hangover for lesser characters. Not for Gyökeres. He has followed up his 43-goal debut campaign at the Alvalade with a staggering 28 for club and country already this term, including 16 in 10 league games (Sporting have won all 10 going into Amorim’s last in charge, at his former club Braga on Sunday evening) and five in four in the Champions League, incorporating Tuesday night’s hat-trick against City. Yet the goals don’t tell the whole story.
It is about how he marshals Sporting from the front, with the pace to get the team up the pitch, the physicality to lead and to occupy defenders and the technical ability to connect meaningfully with the talent around him, such as Pedro Gonçalves (Amorim’s eventual choice as Bruno Fernandes’ de facto replacement after he left for United) and Francisco Trincão.
Gyökeres may not quite have the breakneck speed of Erling Haaland but he has become a similarly pitiless finisher and, unlike his fellow Scandinavian, he is a genuine creator too, with 10 assists in the league alone last season, carrying on a thread to his game that he honed at Coventry in the Championship.
Having the physical strength is one thing and using it effectively is another.
Gyökeres’ personality is what really suggests he can become a fixture at elite level. When Sporting hosted Porto in the clássico just before Christmas last year, he already had enough of a reputation in Liga circles for the great Pepe to single him out for some special treatment.
Gyökeres never looked like bending or breaking for a second. He lapped the veteran after picking up the ball way out wide to score an 11th-minute opener and was all over the Portugal legend. After Pepe had later been overcome by frustration and picked up a rare red card, Gyökeres laid the clincher on a plate for Gonçalves.
It was sheer bullying, just not in the direction which we had come to expect in encounters involving Pepe. Still one of the world’s better defenders right up until his retirement at the end of the season at 41 and outstanding against Arsenal later in that season’s Champions League, he had rarely been taught a lesson like this.
So where next for a player on such a seemingly inexorable course? The Premier League seems most likely, and Amorim was quite insistent to the Sporting board that Gyökeres was the centre-forward he needed in 2023, despite directors’ reservations about parting with a club record €20m fee for a player from the English second tier.
This ardent show of faith, as well as Gyökeres’ extraordinary level of development under the new United coach, will lead many to come to the conclusion that they are destined to reunite at Old Trafford. Yet most of England’s big boys will surely be interested come summer 2025, with Sporting likely to consider a climbdown from that colossal release clause (a concession that would be less likely in January, as Amorim has already publicly acknowledged since taking the United job).
In the meantime, Gyökeres will continue to thrive in Lisbon, where he is fulfilled on and off the pitch – since his romance with the actor Inês Aguiar became public knowledge Sporting fans have inundated her on social media with messages to get her partner to stay in Portugal, a campaign that an amused Amorim endorsed with a smile. Gyökeres’ talent, though, is just too big to contain beyond this season.
