Sporting president Frederico Varandas offered a measured response to Viktor Gy\u00f6keres\u2019s departure to Arsenal while making clear he still holds the striker in high regard. The transfer process proved protracted, with Sporting insisting on maximum value. Representatives for Gy\u00f6keres waived their fees during negotiations and an agreement worth a total of \u00a363.5 million ($85.3 million) was reached.<\/p>\n
On his relationship with the player and those who negotiated the deal, Varandas said: “I sent a message congratulating Gy\u00f6keres [on the move],” and added: “He will always be a legend at this club, and as president of Sporting, I will always defend that legend. He was one of the best professionals I had here until the end of the season.”<\/p>\n
The president did not spare a pointed aside about the agents involved. “I have fond memories of his agents. I think they\u2019re very good, because I made \u20ac90 million and paid no commission. They\u2019re excellent agents. I have the best memories… zero commission.” That line underlined Sporting\u2019s negotiating stance as Arsenal pressed to complete the signing.<\/p>\n
Gy\u00f6keres has started his Arsenal career with two goals in his first three appearances, both coming in a 5\u20130 victory over newly promoted Leeds United. His outings against Manchester United and Liverpool produced no goals, prompting some scrutiny of his early form at his new club.<\/p>\n
Now on international duty with Sweden, Gy\u00f6keres will aim to regain momentum in Friday\u2019s World Cup qualifier against Slovenia, a match that will feature a meeting with new Manchester United signing Benjamin \u0160e\u0161ko. Previewing the clash, \u0160e\u0161ko said: “[Sweden] have top players, we are all aware of that. But we are also aware of our quality. We are definitely facing a top-level match. Everything will depend on us.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Varandas defended Gyokeres and mocked his agents after the \u00a363.5m switch to Arsenal. Latest transfer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2514,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,172],"tags":[317,924],"class_list":["post-2515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-epl","tag-benjamin-sesko","tag-viktor-gyokeres-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}