.
“When I took him to Bromma, he was 14 and the head of the academy said he wasn’t good enough,” David Eklund, a scout at Gyokeres’ first Swedish club, told the BBC.
Even after moving to Coventry City in January 2021, the Championship side’s assistant coach Adi Viveash revealed extensive doubts about the misfiring striker. “For me,” he told the Coventry Telegraph, “it was a little bit of, ‘will he get to that level?'”
However, Gyokeres has exploded over the last 18 months, lighting up the Portuguese top flight at Sporting CP. A Champions League hat-trick against Manchester City rammed home the 26-year-old’s quality to a wider audience, but several clubs from across Europe have been interested in Gyokeres for a while now.
Liverpool are still feeling the consequences of splashing the cash on a prolific striker ripping up the Portuguese top flight. Darwin Nunez is yet to replicate a red-hot burst of form at Benfica which convinced Liverpool to part ways with as much as £85m in 2022.
Arne Slot was not at the club when Nunez arrived and was only allowed to spend £10m on outfield players during his first summer on Merseyside. There have been tenuous links with Gyokeres although those whispers could grow in volume if a non-committal Mohamed Salah opens up a slot in Liverpool’s forward line this summer.
When Gyokeres’ agent Hasan Cetinkaya took his client to Sporting in 2023, he told manager Ruben Amorim: “Here is my boy, he came to Sporting because of you.”
Gyokeres has been full of praise for the influential Portuguese coach who is heading to Manchester United in November. The avenue to Old Trafford seems clear but recent reports have suggested that the Sweden international “turns his nose up” at the idea of joining United.
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