Gyökeres to Arsenal finally getting close?

We’re still waiting on news from the super reliable journalists, but there are decent reports of some smoke around the smouldering fire that is Viktor Gyökeres trying his best to leave Sporting Lisbon for a richer club.

Both Nico Schira and L’Equipe are reporting that Arsenal and Gyökeres have agreed terms on a 5-year deal, ahead of negotiations between the Gunners and Sporting. There’s a dubious report out there that Gyökeres has a deal with Sporting in which his agent gets paid a huge fee if they reject a bid in excess of €60m. I can’t imagine any club would ever agree to that, but €60m does sound like the price I’d expect Arsenal to pay to get this move done.

On a personal level, Gyökeres is hanging out in Mykonos instead of reporting to preseason training. He’s also dumped his Portuguese girlfriend, which is probably a stronger indicator that a deal is close than any of the other reporting. No, I can’t tell whether I’m joking either.

Long-time readers will already be familiar with Gyökeres’ stats, but we’ve got a lot of new subscribers in the last couple of months, so here’s a refresher. He’s been off-the-charts productive in the Portuguese Liga, which is not very good outside of the top 4-5 teams every season. He did a lot of stats farming against poor opposition, as you could guess when you see the comparison to his Champions League stats. But his CL stats are still pretty good.

Of all the strikers that Arsenal have been linked to this summer, I see Gyökeres as the lowest risk, lowest potential reward option. I do not think he has anywhere near the superstar potential of Benjamin Šeško, Hugo Ekitike, or even Darwin Núñez; he’s just not the same caliber of athlete. But he’s also by far the best volume shooter and most reliable finisher of the group. If you think you have title-winning quality throughout the rest of your squad, I totally get going for the guy who just isn’t going to screw it up.

Three players to watch at women’s Euro 2025

The UEFA women’s Euro 2025 kicks off today, which is on ITV/BBC in the UK, and FOX in the United States. You can find listings for other countries here.

If you’d like to know more ahead of the tournament, please check out some friends of the program. Andre Carlisle did a great preview on his newsletter, and Yash Thakur broke down the state of the top contenders at Grace On Football. If you’d really like to dig into an extremely comprehensive look at every single player, you can find that at The Guardian.

Here are 3 of my favorite players in the tournament, and candidates for the Golden Ball.

Patri Guijarro — Spain

Ballon d’Or winner Aitana Bonmatí is likely to miss the start of the tournament after recovering from a serious illness, and while Alexia Putellas is still undoubtedly a world class player, she hasn’t quite returned to her pre-ACL injury, best in the world form. I think the best player in the Spain team and most perpetually underappreciated player on earth is Patri Guijarro, the Swiss army knife who can play as a box-to-box midfielder, a 6, or even a center back.

Radars for Barcelona women’s players will not look like anything you’ve ever seen on the men’s side, given their complete and utter dominance, but I think this is actually an accurate representation of Patri’s ability to do absolutely everything you’d ever want a midfielder to do. The MVP, the GOAT, etc.

Caroline Graham Hansen — Norway

Another ridiculous looking Barcelona radar. Norway has historically underperformed their talent level at every single international tournament for… oof, about 20 years at this point. But if this is going to be the year they finally stop doing that, one of the big reasons will need to be Graham Hansen performing at or near her Barca level.

She’s probably the best all-around winger in the world. Equal parts dribbling machine, assist maker, and shooter.

Beth Mead — England

I think that Lauren James is England’s best player and their top Golden Ball candidate when she’s fit, but she struggled with injuries this season and has not played a lot of minutes in the friendlies leading up to this tournament. The Three Lionesses’ top performer at the moment is Arsenal’s Mead, whose radar kind of looks like Graham Hansen from AliExpress.

Fortunately for Mead, she has teammates who have performed much better at international level in recent times. I expect her to challenge for the assist lead in this tournament.

—KM

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