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Every goalscorer needs a trademark celebration and the one Viktor Gyökeres has shown off over the past few years has certainly increased its reach of late – fingers interlocked, thumbs pushed up, a mask formed across his mouth and nose.
As Gyökeres’s transfer from Sporting to Arsenal has edged along, fans of the London club became increasingly desperate for clues. They were convinced they spotted one when the defender, Riccardo Calafiori, was pictured at their kit launch with the shirt pulled up towards his eyes; mask-style. And then there was Myles Lewis-Skelly, another of their defenders, looking at a Gyökeres-to-Arsenal story on his phone and copying the gesture.
What does it mean? There is a theory that it owes its inspiration to a line from the Tom Hardy character, Bane, in The Dark Knight Rises film. “No-one cared who I was till I put on the mask,” he says. Is it Gyökeres’s way of making a point to the doubters – and there have been a few of those along what has been an unconventional career path?
“No,” he told reporters in 2023 after a Sweden game. “That’s a good guess but you’re completely wrong. You can have another guess the next time you interview me.”
Why the secrecy, Viktor? “I don’t know,” he replied. “It’s fun when you guess wrong so I’ll keep doing it.”
Seriously, though, it has to be to silence the critics? “No, it’s not that, either. Now you’ve had two guesses and you have to stop. You can say it right once but I’ll say it was wrong.”
Gyökeres’s manager at Coventry, Mark Robins, was once asked to explain it. “I know what it means,” he said. “Has he not told you? I won’t be revealing it then.” And it is fair to say Gyökeres stirred the pot – and took delight in doing so – when he captioned an Instagram post in June of last year with a virtual re-quote of Hardy/Bane. “Nobody cared until I put on the mask,” he wrote.
Plainly, he thrives on keeping people guessing, especially defenders, and the whole shemozzle advertises more than the twinkle he has in his eye; the innate confidence of a showman. The 27-year-old appears keen to create a sense of mystique as he strives to become the best, an icon. And when it comes to Gyökeres, mystery is certainly a part of it.
There is a brilliant clip of him from his time at Sporting when an interviewer asks how it is that people around Europe do not know of his talent. “They don’t?” Gyökeres shoots back.
It talks to the curiosity fans have in general with regard to late bloomers. Gyökeres has never made an appearance in one of Europe’s so-called “big five” leagues. Apart from his two seasons with Sporting in the Primeira Liga, he has always played below the top division in various countries – in Sweden’s second and third tiers with IF Brommapojkarna (BP, for short); the Premier League 2 with Brighton under-23s; the Bundesliga 2 with St Pauli; the Championship with Swansea and Coventry.
Gyökeres was spectacular at Sporting, scoring 97 goals in 102 appearances. He won back-to-back league titles, back-to-back Golden Boots and the Portuguese Cup in his second season. He did well in his first Champions League campaign last time out, playing in all eight of Sporting’s group stage ties and scoring six goals, the highlight being the hat-trick in the 4-1 win over Manchester City. Is the sample size large enough to justify Arsenal’s £63.7m move for him?
It is the jeopardy of the step up to the Premier League that enthrals and Gyökeres has been here before, albeit at a formative stage of his development. He was 19 when he went from BP to Brighton in January 2018 on the back of a breakout 2017; the seasons run on calendar years in Sweden. A regular for BP, he helped them to promotion from the second tier, scoring 13 goals and providing eight assists.
At Brighton, then managed by Chris Hughton, there were a handful of cup appearances over the 18 months that followed but Gyökeres played mainly for the under-23s. He was an unused substitute on three occasions in the Premier League. Gyökeres had been turned from a winger into a central striker at BP – he went there on a full-time basis at 16 from his first club, Aspudden-Tellus, in Stockholm – but he alternated between playing on the left and up top at Brighton.
“I like Viktor,” Hughton says. “He had a great desire to want to do well; very driven. If you ask me did I see what he is now back then, I would probably say no. But it was nothing to do with the boy’s attitude, his work ethic. Football was very much his life. He was a good pro.
“It was almost more of a positional one. At the time, there was that question – is he going to be better as a nine or a wider player? He actually did well in that wider area in a 4-3-3, mostly on the left. Because he is a runner with and without the ball. Once he gets it he likes to drive. He’s prepared to run forward with and without.”
Gyökeres reached Coventry on an initial loan in January 2021 after a season at St Pauli in 2019-20 and three months at Swansea – both loans. He played an important role in helping St Pauli avoid relegation; they stayed in Germany’s second division by two points. But Swansea was more of a struggle. He started only two league games for them, his only goal coming in the FA Cup.
Robins remembers how Gyökeres was not match-ready at first for Coventry and he began by using him more as a substitute. “You could tell it irked him,” Robins told Uefa’s website last November. “I said to everyone around: ‘he’s in a rush.’ You could see he’s in a rush for his career to take off. If he didn’t score after a game, he’d be in a foul mood.”
Gyökeres felt things turn after making his move from Brighton to Coventry permanent in the summer of 2021. There were 17 league goals in his first full season for them; 21 the next, which ended in the penalty shootout defeat against Luton in the Championship playoff final. Then came the explosion at Sporting.
“We would have said at Brighton he was a player who would get into a lot of positions to finish because of his effort and determination,” Hughton says. “We wouldn’t have seen him as somebody that was a natural finisher. What has happened with him is to do with confidence and opportunities – and continually putting himself in positions to have efforts at goal. Whatever we say about Sporting to Arsenal, it is still a big step up. But one thing that is guaranteed is he will get ample opportunities to score.”
Gyökeres has done things the hard way. It feels like a long time ago he was starting out at Aspudden-Tellus, playing on a gravel pitch. His father, Stefan, a former player at Östersund, would be brought in to coach his team, which is normally a little bit strange for the child. And it had to be unsettling for the striker when he was advised to stay away from pre-season training at Sporting to force the transfer to Arsenal.
Gyökeres needed to show his strength of character, as he has done when he was there but no one noticed, no one cared. Everybody sees him now.
