Sporting Lisbon manager Ruben Amorin has said the club will ‘have to sell’ in-demand forward Viktor Gyokeres at some stage.
Gyokeres has been linked with a move to the Premier League after a stunning start to his career with the Portuguese side, with the 25-year-old having scored 20 goals and laid on 10 assists in 24 appearances in all competitions.
The Swedish striker joined Sporting from Coventry City for a fee of around €20m in the summer, though will cost interested clubs five times that amount this month.
Gyokeres has a release clause of €100m in his contract at the Portuguese league leaders and Amorin has insisted that figure must be met if he is to lose his leading scorer in January.
However, the Sporting boss has suggested the club will find it difficult to keep Gyokeres long term, given the interest from Europe’s top clubs.
“Obviously, I was informed of the news. As soon as they said it was 85, I thought: ‘That’s not enough’. It’s only 100. I’m not worried,” he said, as per GOAL.
“Obviously, every club has to sell. What they’ve said is that, in the middle of the season, they’ll only leave for the clause. As we can’t control that, I feel quite calm because we can’t do anything about it.
“Of course, we have to look at Viktor’s impact on the team, we’d have to change a lot of things, hence the board’s endeavour to say that players we can’t afford to lose will only leave for the fee. I haven’t spoken to Viana about that. Nowadays, there are obviously clubs that can easily pay 100, but we don’t control that.
“I’m sure there could be offers in the summer. Right now, I don’t know. We’ll have to sell, but right now only for the clause. It’s hard for anyone to beat 100 million. I doubt there’s been an offer. I’d be informed, I believe. I don’t believe it was true. €85m is far from our value, we’re not going to suffer in anticipation.”
