LONDON — The piercing blue eyes of Viktor Gyokeres sum up his steely, serious and focused personality. He is all business. His focus unwavering.
With the sunshine beating down outside, he strolls into a dark room at Arsenal’s training ground with total confidence. He is exactly the kind of character, and player, Mikel Arteta wanted to add to aid Arsenal’s trophy push.
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“He wants to kill you,” Arteta joked recently amid Gyokeres’ purple patch of goals. “He’s got that eye. When he looks at you, he can look a bit intimidating.”
The towering Swedish striker is definitely a presence when he walks into a room. But he’s also relaxed and laser-focused on the key part he has to play in Arsenal’s quest for four trophies this season.
As he explains to Pro Soccer Talk, this is nothing new for him. He won two-straight Portuguese league titles, and a Portuguese cup, with Sporting Lisbon before joining Arsenal last summer for $73.4 million. He won the Gerd Muller Trophy as the best striker in Europe in 2025 with 54 goals in 52 games.
Gyokeres feels he can use all of that experience to get Arsenal over the line as they go head-to-head with Manchester City, and others, to win multiple trophies over the next few months, including a first league title in over 20 years.
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“For the last two years I have been in quite a similar situation in different ways where we’ve been fighting for titles,” Gyokeres explains. “It has been tough in different stages in the season and the rivals have been close to us in the league table. But luckily we managed to finish first in both seasons I was at Sporting which was obviously amazing. So I think being in this position now with Arsenal, I think it’s helping me just having the belief and the excitement being in this position right now and not fearing things too much.”
There is very little Gyokeres fears.
His career path has been long and winding. He played on small teams in Sweden, then to Brighton in England before loan spells at St. Pauli in Germany, plus Swansea City and Coventry City (which became permanent) in England’s second tier all before the age of 25. Then off to Portugal to win titles and score boatloads of goals before being selected as the missing piece of the jigsaw to spearhead Arsenal’s increasingly desperate push for trophies.
As one of only a few Arsenal players in the current squad who have actually won trophies in their career so far, can his experiences help his teammates?
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“Yeah of course if you’ve been in similar situations that you felt and you won in the end, of course that’s going to help you believe that you can do it again. Because you’ve done it before. So I think there are just positives to take from that,” Gyokeres said.
Speak to anyone about his personality and it quickly becomes clear Gyokeres is very matter of fact. He keeps it simple. He does his job. He works hard. He focuses on what he has to do to be the best he can be. What does he want to improve on to reach the next level as a striker?
“I can improve everything. Everything,” he says, bluntly. He’s consistent. Asked about his recent Arsenal player of the month award, Gyokeres was quick to play it down. He’s all about the team first.
“I feel good and to get that award is great but I think they are more important things to get this season. I think we just have to do things like we have done the last couple of months and improve as well and together to go where we want to go,” Gyokeres added, clear that the focus should not be on him.
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What is also clear is that Gyokeres’ understanding of how he fits in at Arsenal, and how Arsenal fits him, is growing stronger each week. He’s up for the Premier League player of the month award for February. He’s settling in very nicely.
Arsenal haven’t had a number nine like him under Arteta and there have been growing pains this season trying to fit him into their system. It was always going to take time. But the connection with Eberechi Eze, Bukayo Saka, Leandro Trossard and others is getting even better and his hold-up play as well as his finishing has added an extra dimension to Arsenal’s attack in recent weeks.
How do you work on that chemistry and connection in attack?
“First of all I think the most important thing is to understand your teammates and how they play,” Gyokeres said. “Then of course when you play games with them I think that’s where you improve the most because you understand in the games how it works and how you should move in relation to them and of course also according to how we want to play in that certain game as well. I think over time it has been better and better and of course there is a lot of amazing players here in the team so that makes it even easier.”
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Gyokeres laughs when asked what he does in his spare time “I hang out here (at the training ground) most of the time!”
Which Arsenal teammates is he closest with?
“The Scandinavian guys in the team, Christian [Norgaard] and Martin [Odegaard] I hang out with them a lot. But I think it’s easy to hang out with most of the guys in the team to be honest and I think we are that group where everyone can be with everyone so I think it’s a good group,” Gyokeres added.
Guarded about his life away from the pitch, football has always been, and will always be, the focus for Gyokeres.
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“To be honest it was mostly football,” Gyokeres said when asked about playing other sports and growing up near Stockholm, Sweden. “We have a lot of other sports but it’s like in every other country the easiest to play is football. Since I was young I started to play football and growing up there was fun. I went to a football school when I was 8 or 9 and you were in the same class as a lot of footballers and you played every time you got the chance and we had trainings with them as well in the mornings and it was just a lot of football but a lot of fun as well. So, yeah, I enjoyed it.”
What is important to Viktor Gyokeres? What does he enjoy most?
“Family. Friends. Goals. Winning football matches. Celebrate with the fans. Winning titles,” Gyokeres says, deadpan.
He is serious and blunt and honest. Just the kind of character Arsenal need to help them be more ruthless down the stretch as Gyokeres aims to stay on track and be the difference maker for them this season.
Read the full article here
