Is Gyokeres right for Arsenal? Plus: Saudi club keen on Messi, FIFA office in Trump Tower

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Hello! Arsenal appear to have found their goalscoring machine. Let’s hope they’ve picked well.

On the way:

🤔 Is Gyokeres right for Arteta?

🇸🇦 Messi’s Saudi Arabia option

🎥 Man Utd ditch Amazon series

🏢 FIFA opens Trump Tower office

Statistical freak: But is Gyokeres a better choice than Sesko to fill Arsenal’s striker void?

(Bernardo Benjamim/ATP Images/Getty Images)

“Sign a centre-forward” won’t be the cry around the Emirates Stadium in the coming season because, plainly, Arsenal are in the process of buying one. They’re almost there with Viktor Gyokeres from Lisbon’s Sporting CP, barring the finer details.

So, in time-honoured tradition, we now move on to the matter of whether they’re signing the right centre-forward, in a market where manager Mikel Arteta had choices. Arsenal devoted as much attention to his RB Leipzig counterpart Benjamin Sesko as they did to Gyokeres, but the Swede is winning out: slightly older, potentially slightly cheaper, and the No 9 who Arteta is inclined to stake his chips on.

Recruiting at that position (something Arsenal failed to do for longer than was healthy) is regarded as the cure to Arteta’s inability to win more major trophies to add to his FA Cup five years ago — the Premier League title most of all. Having gone close to the latter more than once, a reliable finisher could be the silver bullet. But football is more complicated than that, and Gyokeres will only tip the balance if he proves an ideal fit — which is where Thom Harris’ analysis comes in.

What are his strengths?

Gyokeres, who turned 27 a month ago, is a statistical freak. At Sporting, he has appeared in 102 matches and scored 97 times — a rate of a goal every 87 minutes of game time. In the season just gone, he racked up 33 goals in Portugal’s Primeira Liga without scoring with his head once. His figure of 85 sprints in behind opposition defences was way beyond anyone else in the division, and was more than three times higher than the highest individual tally in England’s Premier League (24, by Chelsea’s Nicolas Jackson). He’s a physical unit.

His running would give Arsenal more counter-attacking threat, and Gyokeres’ tendency to drift into the left channel promises to improve an area where Arteta’s side could be better. Much of their more effective build-up flows through Bukayo Saka, Ben White and Martin Odegaard on the other side of the pitch. To this point, it sounds good.

On the flipside, the Premier League is stronger than Portugal’s top tier — quite considerably so — and as a dominant team, Arsenal regularly encounter deep defences. Gyokeres won’t go close to 85 sprints behind back lines in his first year. He’ll have to adapt but, at his age, he is less of a development project than Sesko, who turned 22 in May.

In a perfect world, and at the right price, Sesko might have made more sense.

That said, I was pretty much sold on Thom’s observations. It’s a compelling case for Gyokeres thriving at the Emirates. See what you think.

Elanga on cusp of £52m Newcastle move

Gyokeres features prominently in our DealSheet this morning but the most eye-catching line from my perspective was Newcastle United agreeing a £52m ($70.7m) fee with Nottingham Forest for winger Anthony Elanga.

While cash flies in all directions elsewhere, nobody to this point has liked the colour of Newcastle’s money, and targets keep knocking them back. They’ve drawn a blank with Bryan Mbeumo, they lost out on both Joao Pedro and Liam Delap to Chelsea and predictably, Real Madrid blew them out of the water to sign Dean Huijsen. Nailing Elanga has taken some persistence.

There’s a wider context here because in May, Newcastle’s sporting director, Paul Mitchell, abruptly quit. The message from St James’ Park was that the club’s strategy for the summer would hold up without him but you did start to wonder. Saudi Arabian funding plus Champions League qualification gives Newcastle clout, but the longer they drew a blank, the more it would have felt like a window going wrong.

Here are the other big exclusives from the DealSheet today:

• Saudi Pro League club Al Ahli are being touted as suitors for Lionel Messi. We still expect him to renew with Inter Miami beyond 2025, but this update feeds into the piece we wrote last week about the 38-year-old weighing up new horizons.
• His first spell in England with Everton was an ordeal but Moise Kean was on fire up front for Fiorentina last season, so it figures that Manchester United have him on their list of viable forwards.
• David Ornstein reports that Arsenal have completed the signing of defender Christian Norgaard from Brentford for £10m. He’s a good stocking-filler at that price.
• Bayern Munich are back in for Chelsea forward Christopher Nkunku. Given the loss of Jamal Musiala to injury, and Bayern’s failure to land Nico Williams or Florian Wirtz, they’ll want more attacking depth.
• Everton having a nibble at Aston Villa’s John McGinn is intriguing. Villa sound reluctant but signing the 30-year-old would be one way of Everton adding bundles of energy to their midfield.

News round-up

• As if it wasn’t close enough to political circles already, FIFA is to open an office in New York City’s Trump Tower. In other words, U.S. President Donald Trump will be the world football governing body’s landlord. Yes, you read that right.
• We’ve been waiting for Forest to formally confirm this: Edu, the ex-Arsenal sporting director, has become the new global head of football at the City Ground. He’ll also have influence over other teams — Olympiacos in Greece and Rio Ave in Portugal — controlled by Forest’s owner Evangelos Marinakis.
• Luka Modric to Milan is a done deal, according to head coach Massimiliano Allegri. The 39-year-old will become a free agent once he leaves Real Madrid at the end of the Club World Cup.
• OL Lyonnes completed the signing of USWNT prospect Lily Yohannes from Ajax yesterday. The 18-year-old has taken up a three-year contract. I’d love to know the fee involved, because she’s worth a few bob.
• A USMNT youngster is also on the move. Striker Damion Downs, 21, is joining English Championship team Southampton from Germany’s Koln. He’s costing £6.8m.

Back-up bosses: Man City, Guardiola and the importance of assistant managers

(Chris Brunskill/Fantasista/Getty Images)

When I read that Pep Lijnders — the former Liverpool assistant and right-hand man to Jurgen Klopp — was joining Pep Guardiola’s staff at Manchester City, my instinct was to think about the advantage to City of knowing Liverpool’s inner secrets. As Guardiola put it: “I drink from his knowledge.”

What I didn’t consider, and what George Caulkin touches on in this piece, was (irrespective of past allegiances) the value of simply having a fresh voice in the building. City are in flux. They’re coming off the back of a stinking 2024-25 season, their squad is undergoing an overhaul and, as strange as it sounds given Guardiola’s brilliance, hearing somebody new speak might not be a bad thing.

The ex-England striker Alan Shearer, who George quotes in his article, sums it up nicely: “Somewhere down the line, the same thing happens to all managers: players stop listening. It becomes the same voices and the same faces. You tune out. It’s human nature.” I’m not saying that’s what has happened to Guardiola at City but if it has, Lijnders could be his most astute acquisition of the summer.

One to watch: Gilberto Mora, 16, Mexico’s record breaker

(Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images)

We’re forever scouring the globe in search of the next big thing and while I’m wary of fanning him up too much, I’d suggest keeping tabs on Gilberto Mora, the baby face in Mexico’s Gold Cup-winning squad.

The longer Thom Harris’ profile of the 16-year-old wizkid goes on, the more the records tumble.

Mora is the youngest player to win a senior international trophy, beating Lamine Yamal and Pele. He debuted for his club, Tijuana, at 15 (shirt No 251 seems apt, somehow) and took all of two weeks to become Liga MX’s youngest goalscorer, hence the attention that’s on him.

His dribbling is infectious (commentators use the phrase “encara Mora” — “still Mora”) and he’s a wonderfully free spirit. Many a promising kid has been sacrificed on the altar of hype but elite teams are not blind to the Americas. Much more of this, and Europe will come calling.

Around TAFC

• Just the 11 goals in their first two games for Spain’s women at Euro 2025, then. Hand them the trophy already.
• There isn’t much that Saudi Arabia or its Public Investment Fund (PIF) can’t bend to its will but how concerned or otherwise should we be about football’s close relationship with the Gulf state? That’s the thorny subject of a special podcast put together by Adam Leventhal. It’s on Apple and Spotify.
• Barcelona’s Camp Nou redevelopment is more delayed than the UK’s railway network. They’re aiming to have it partly ready for the start of La Liga’s new season in the middle of next month, but the clock is ticking and it’s far from clear if they’re on track.
• I sat and watched tennis’ world No 24 Flavio Cobolli take Marin Cilic apart at Wimbledon yesterday. Did you know Cobolli was once an accomplished academy right-back for Serie A giants Roma? Me neither.
• Most clicked in Monday’s TAFC: the USMNT’s Gold Cup defeat.

Catch a match

(Kick-offs ET/UK time)

FIFA Club World Cup semi-final: Fluminense vs Chelsea, 3pm/8pm — DAZN, in both territories.

Women’s European Championship — Group C: Germany vs Denmark, 12pm/5pm; Poland vs Sweden, 3pm/8pm — both Fox Sports/BBC.

And finally…

If they can avoid unduly embarrassing themselves, access-all-areas documentaries are a bit of a no-brainer for pro clubs. They open up new audiences. The fee you get for participating is easy money. Humiliation doesn’t have to be part of the package.

But Manchester United secretly negotiating with Amazon Prime — revealed by Adam Crafton and David Ornstein here — to join the streaming firm’s All Or Nothing series next season seems incredibly rash. Old Trafford is a world of bad publicity. God knows why anybody there would want cameras behind the scenes. They must have seen the light, because the plug has been pulled on the whole idea.

Jot that down as perhaps the most sensible decision United have made in a decade.

(Top photo: David Martins/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

This news was originally published on this post .

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