With Brighton & Hove Albion‘s pre-season already underway in preparation for their second consecutive term in the Premier League, one of the U23 players who was called up to the week-long training camp in Austria has the potential to go onto become a quality player.
The player in question is 19-year-old Swedish striker Victor Gyökeres. The striker joined Albion back in January for a fee of around £1m from the Swedish top-flight side Brommapojkarna, having scored 20 goals in 59 appearances for them. The young striker has also been capped at the U18 and U19 level for Sweden, where he also has a good scoring record having scored seven goals in 13 games for his countries U19 side.
An Impressive Youngster!
The 19-year-old Swedish striker has been particularly impressive for the Brighton U23’s. After linking up with Simon Rusk’s side in January, Gyökeres scored eight goals in 14 appearances and was a key figure in the U23’s promotion-winning campaign from the U23’s BPL 2 last season.
This form has led to him being called up to Albion’s training camp last week in Austria and saw him play 45 minutes against the Swiss top flight side, St Gallen. He impressed in that game with his link-up play with the club-record signing, Jurgen Locadia and he was fingertips away from scoring his first senior goal for Brighton.
The Next Ibrahimovic?
Gyökeres has been pretty impressive during his career so far and has been touted as the next Zlatan Ibrahimović, which is some comparison to live up to. However, this is something which is not totally hard to believe as Gyökeres and Ibrahimović have some similarities.
Firstly, both of them started their careers in youth academies at Swedish top tier clubs, before moving to a top-flight club in another country, to Brighton and Ajax respectively.
Secondly, both of them have a great eye for goal and have impressive scoring records at both the club and international level.
Thirdly, they are both similar type of players being tall strikers, who can win the ball in the air and hold it up but can also play fancy passing football, which makes it very easy for them to slot into any team and do a job.
The Future Looks Bright!
Gyökeres has a very bright future ahead of him and could go onto achieve big things in his career if he continues to perform like he has so far in his career. Having seen him play in the flesh, he was very impressive and is a complete striker.
He is also very skillful and confident while running at defenders and this means he can also play on the left wing making him a versatile option for manager Chris Hughton. As long as Gyökeres continues to impress in pre-season for Brighton there is a chance to see him feature in cup competitions for the senior side and also make the bench in the Premier League.
The other option for Brighton would be to loan out Gyökeres to a Championship side to get him some experience of playing week in week out at a high level, so Brighton could see how he does in such a tough and physical league like the Championship.
