Gyokeres returns to Sporting with a Champions League tie he could not have scripted
Viktor Gyokeres walks back out onto the Estadio Jose Alvalade turf on Tuesday night wearing red and white, but not the colours he wore for two years. The Champions League quarter-final first leg between Sporting CP and Arsenal is the reunion neither club could have scripted better.
Gyokeres scored 97 goals in 102 games for Sporting after arriving from Coventry in 2023. He won two league titles, a Portuguese Cup, and finished top scorer in the Primeira Liga in back-to-back seasons. When Arsenal finally secured his signature last summer in a deal worth around £64 million, the Swede left Lisbon as the most popular player at the club.
A reunion rather than a revenge mission
The obvious narrative is betrayal, but that is not the mood inside the Sporting squad. Maxi Araujo, who played alongside Gyokeres in both title-winning seasons, said this week that the dressing room felt "happy" when the move went through and views it as a deserved reward for what the striker gave the club. Head coach Rui Borges has been even more direct, saying he hopes the home fans applaud rather than boo when Gyokeres is announced in the starting eleven.
A goal.com poll suggested 52 percent of Sporting supporters felt the same way. The other half may have different plans. Either way, the moment the ball first reaches Gyokeres's feet in front of the north stand will set the tone for the entire tie.
How Gyokeres has adapted at Arsenal
The first few months in north London were not straightforward. Premier League defences rarely allow the kind of running room Gyokeres thrived on in Portugal, and Mikel Arteta's system demanded he link play more than he had been used to. The numbers have slowly started to move in his direction. Seventeen goals in 43 appearances across all competitions is a respectable return, and a goal in Arsenal's recent FA Cup quarter-final loss at Southampton suggested he is back in rhythm heading into the biggest week of his season.
Arteta said on Monday that his striker's season will be defined by how he handles the run-in. This is the run-in. A tie against the club that made him, in a stadium where he averaged almost a goal per game, is exactly the kind of test that tends to separate elite finishers from the rest.
What Sporting have without him
Sporting have not stood still. Luis Suarez, the Colombian striker signed from Almeria, has helped ensure the Gyokeres-shaped hole is not a gaping one, and Borges has shaped the team to press harder and attack wider than it did last season. Sporting reached the quarter-finals the hard way, overturning a three-goal first-leg deficit against Bodo/Glimt in the last sixteen, and they beat Paris Saint-Germain in the league phase with just 25.4 percent possession. Borges knows exactly how to set his team up against opposition that expects to dominate the ball.
History is not kind to the home side. Portuguese clubs have lost all nine of their previous Champions League quarter-final ties against English opposition. Arsenal will arrive as favourites. But Sporting have spent this season refusing to read the script, and in their former number nine they have a player who will know exactly where every weakness in their defence lies.
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