Viktor Gyokeres Revealed His 2 Footballing Idols - Both Played for Man United

 Viktor Gyokeres has followed the trend of Scandinavian forwards becoming all the rage – and the Swedish sharpshooter could be on the move this summer. Ruben Amorim’s Manchester United are among his suitors and, interestingly, he once named two Red Devils icons as his footballing idols.

Gyokeres is 27, thus at the peak of his powers, and would offer any side in Europe a potent threat in and around the box. In 2024/25 alone, he shattered plenty of records by plundering an eye-catching 54 strikes in 52 games in all competitions.

GIVEMESPORT Key Statistic: In 102 outings for Sporting, Gyokeres has notched 125 goal contributions (97 goals and 28 assists). Mightily impressive, that.

Interest in his signature, therefore, is expected. Teams tried to secure the sharpshooter’s services last summer – but a gentleman’s agreement was made between himself and his current employers that the summer of 2026 would, instead, be the perfect time to part ways.

Gyokeres, In 2024, Revealed Two Footballing Idols

‘I want to do similar things on the pitch’

That said, reports are insisting that Gyokeres is now ‘furious’ with the club’s higher-ups, who have failed to hold up their end of the bargain by potentially pricing out potential would-be buyers. It’s said that they are holding out for around the €100m mark.

Alas, Gyokeres’ future hangs firmly in the balance – but Manchester United, who finished 15th in the 2024/25 Premier League campaign, are among those interested. Arsenal and Juventus, too, are among the goal-getting hitman’s admirers.

Commonly admired as one of the greatest strikers in world football, Stockholm-born Gyokeres – ahead of his side’s 24/25 Champions League clash with Club Brugge – listed two players that he ‘looked up to’ as an up-and-coming centre forward in a chat with UEFA.com, per The Metro.

“The players I looked up to were Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Cristiano Ronaldo. It’s about how they performed on the pitch, they went the extra time which impressed me. I want to do similar things on the pitch.”

Zlatan Ibrahimovic, being Swedish himself, would’ve played a significant part in Gyokeres’ emergence as one of world football’s hottest strikers. Now retired, the 43-year-old enjoyed a brief spell at Old Trafford near the end of his career, between 2016 and 2018.

Signed on a free, the experienced frontman – one of the greatest players to never win the Champions League – scored 29 goals in 53 outings before leaving for LA Galaxy. Short and sweet, perhaps, but Zlatan was loved by the entirety of the fanbase.

It’s also not much of a surprise that Cristiano Ronaldo is seen, by Gyokeres, as a footballing inspiration. Goals are the name of the Sporting talisman’s game – and the Al-Nassr man has provided that in abundance over the years.

The five-time Ballon d’Or winner announced himself onto the world stage with a performance against the Red Devils – coincidentally for Sporting – in 2003 and the rest is history. For the club, he scored an eye-catching 145 goals across both spells.

It's abundantly clear why Gyokeres, who was on the books of Brighton & Hove Albion between 2018 and 2021, holds the aforementioned duo in such high regard; it's now merely a waiting game to see whether he can match their more-than-impressive goalscoring exploits.