During Viktor Gyökeres’s first year at Sporting CP, there was one particular story which fizzed around Portugal’s gossip columns.
Rumour had it that the Swedish striker lost a tennis match to his then-girlfriend Amanda Nildén, a professional footballer for Tottenham Hotspur herself, while on holiday. In a blinding fit of rage, Gyökeres supposedly threw a tantrum so bad that it ruined the rest of the trip.
At the end of an in-depth interview covering a number of serious topics, Aftonbladet’s Simon Bank couldn’t help but ask Gyökeres whether there was any merit to this rather unflattering piece of tittle-tattle.
“That’s true,” he shrugged. It might not have ruined the entire holiday, but Gyökeres confirmed that he refused to speak to Nildén for “half a day or whatever”. Entirely unashamed by his John McEnroe homage, the perennial competitor reasoned that he “was a little worse at tennis” and stressed: “It was lucky.”
By his own admission, this feverish desire to win has always burned in Gyökeres. It’s why he has averaged a goal every 87 minutes for two years, why Arsenal have paid more than £63 million ($86 million) for his services and why he won’t be handed a racket upon his arrival in north London.
The Reluctant One-Man Team
“It was my parents’ decision, not mine,” Gyökeres told UEFA when remembering his reluctant introduction to organised football at his first club IFK Aspudden-Tellus aged five. “They thought I should train with a team, which I didn’t like at first.”
With his father, Stefan, installed as a coach, little Viktor soon discovered his passion for the sport. At times, it burned a little too bright.
“We had two teams in Aspudden, one a little better and one a little worse, but I wanted to play on both teams,” Gyökeres later recalled to Aftonbladet. “I did that, even though I had to let others play in my position. I was still there, as a central midfielder or defender, sometimes a goalkeeper.”
Even now it can look as though Gyökeres is playing multiple positions at once. A constant blur of high knees and pumping arms, the fleshy wrecking ball has not been able to drop his habit of veering all over the pitch. “I played in a less good team for quite a few years when I was younger and I had to do quite a lot myself, on my own,” Gyökeres retrospectively reasoned. “I think you get a little bit of that, that you need to take charge of things yourself.”
Shift to Simplicity
How many Premier League goals will Viktor Gyökeres score this season? pic.twitter.com/zopZRDUOZU
— Sports Illustrated FC (@SI_FootballClub) July 27, 2025
For all of his goals at youth level, Gyökeres was considered just another gifted player to come out of the talent factory that is Brommapojkarna (BP). “The head of the academy said he wasn’t good enough,” BP’s youth scout David Eklund told the BBC. “He was never a superstar like Dejan Kulusevski.”
While the future Spurs forward would go on to dazzle in Serie A, Gyökeres was snapped up by Brighton & Hove Albion.
Across loan spells in the second tiers of Germany and England, Gyökeres struggled for minutes, let alone goals. During a particularly bleak four-month stretch at Swansea City, Arsenal’s new recruit couldn’t dislodge former England C international Jamal Lowe from the starting XI.
Gyökeres’s fortunes began to change once he got off the loan circuit to sign for Coventry City in the summer of 2021. That sense of permanency brought a level of reassurance. Every match was no longer an audition. Without the need to repeatedly justify his involvement, he could focus on the basics.
“At the beginning of my career, I was distracting myself,” Gyökeres mused while in conversation with L’Équipe this summer. “By stopping overthinking on the pitch, I made my football more direct and instinctive. This obsession with goals, which I’ve always had, is once again the essence of my game. I don’t think about anything other than scoring and winning; it changes everything.”
As one of his youth coaches in Sweden, Peter Kisfaludy, told The Athletic, “He is totally ruthless.”
Sporting spotted this relentless streak and whisked him away to Lisbon in 2023 despite admiring glances from Fulham and West Ham United. Gyökeres did his best to fulfil an insatiable desire for goals with a staggering haul of 97 in 102 appearances, each one celebrated by covering his face with a signature mask celebration. That veneer of icy single-mindedness did begin to thaw when the hot prospect of settling some old scores was raised.
‘Great Revenge’
Brighton have enjoyed a lot more hits than misses in the transfer market, but Gyökeres’s distinct failure—or rather, failure to even be given the chance to fail—is a curious case.
“Players develop at different rates,” Brighton chief executive Paul Barber warned The Athletic last year. “In 2021, when Viktor was transferred to Coventry, his pathway here wasn’t clear and, with his contract running down, he wanted a permanent home.
“We have to accept the decision to sell for what it was at that time—right for the player, and right for the club.” There is no ill-feeling towards a player who was only given eight appearances during three-and-a-half years at the club. “What Viktor has gone on to do is fantastic,” Barber admitted.
Gyökeres doesn’t hold a particular grudge towards Brighton either. “I wasn’t good enough to break through there,” he has since conceded. “To play well, you need to be in a good environment. At the time, that wasn’t the case for me.”
But there is a vendetta against the division he was barred from playing in. “I spent several years there without being able to play a single [Premier League] match,” Gyökeres pointed out prior to his arrival at Arsenal. “So, of course, it’s something I’d like to do. It would be a great revenge!”
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Viktor Gyokeres: The Man Behind the Mask.
