Ruben Amorim joked last week about the performance of Sporting Portugal’s Swedish signing Viktor Gyokeres this season. By reaching 25 goals, his team will have to increase the transfer fee. “That will mean he’s been cheap,” laughed the coach after the centre-forward’s brace and assist in his side’s 3-0 win over Leiria.
Viktor Gyokeres is proving to be one of the best strikers in Europe so far in 2024. The Swedish international, who made his breakthrough at Coventry over the last 2 seasons and joined Sporting CP last summer, is already on a career-best run of form and has only missed 2 games since the start of the new year.
In all, the centre-forward has 27 goals and 11 assists in 29 official games for the Lisbon side, which means he has been involved in 38 of the goals scored by the Jose Alvalade outfit this term. Thirteen of these contributions have come since the new year and, bearing in mind that they have been scored in just eight games, it can be confirmed that his performance has been superlative in recent weeks.
Gyokeres welcomed 2024 with a hat-trick of assists in a 5-1 win over Estoril and also featured prominently against Tondela in the Taca de Portugal, scoring two of Ruben Amorim’s side’s goals in a 4-0 win over the minnows in Lisbon. Since then, the 3-0 win over Chaves in La Liga and the 1-0 loss to Sporting Braga in the League Cup semi-finals are the only games in which he has neither scored nor assisted.
In between, the Scandinavian starred with braces in the 2-5 win over Vizela and the 8-0 win over Casa Pia in the domestic championship, and then surpassed the 25-goal mark against Leiria in a match Sporting Portugal won 3-0 and he scored another brace and added an assist. The Stockholm-born striker’s last game before this Europa League visit to Young Boys was a 5-0 win over Sporting Braga in La Liga, in which he also scored a goal.
Just after completing his latest outstanding performance against Leiria, Ruben Amorim was asked about the extra money the Lisbon club would have to pay as he had already surpassed the 25 goals agreed as a future signing bonus with Coventry. The manager could not have been more honest, although he first joked about the source of the payment in the post-match press conference.
“Mainly, I’m not the one paying. Then he’s one of these players that, the more money you pay for them, the cheaper they are. They are cheap because they give a great performance that helps us win games and I would say that his goal has not made it cost us a million more expensive but a million cheaper.”
Taking the 5 big leagues as a reference and adding to these the Portuguese League and the Eredivisie, there are only 2 players who have generated more goals in the league championship so far this season than the Swede Gyokeres. They are Harry Kane, who has scored 29 goals for Bayern (24+5), and Luuk de Jong, who has 26 goals for PSV (18+8).
So far, the Lisbon side’s striker has been so in tune that he can rub shoulders with Kylian Mbappe, who like him was instrumental in his side’s 24 goals. PSG’s Frenchman scored 20 and assisted four and the Scandinavian managed to find the net 16 times and gifted eight goals to his teammates.