Ex-Sporting striker: Ioannidis and Suárez can't play together | OneFootball

Fotis Ioannidis made his scoring debut for Sporting last Monday, September 22, in the Lions' victory over Moreirense. Since then, no one has remained indifferent regarding the player and the signing secured by the club’s management at the close of the transfer window. Paulo Alves believes that both the Greek and Luis Suárez have already shown good signs in Rui Borges’ team.

“The Sporting management is fully aware of this player’s value because he had been on their radar for some time. He is a typical penalty-box striker, strong and good at holding up the ball,” he began, in statements to the newspaper O Jogo, continuing: “You can tell he has a nose for goal. He knew exactly where to position himself to make the most of the cross. He seems like an excellent alternative to Luis Suárez.”

The former Alvalade club player recalled that, besides Ioannidis, Suárez also quickly became one of the team’s standouts: “Luis Suárez is technically very advanced, has good link-up play, is associative, and shows an enormous goal-scoring ability. Ioannidis seems to be physically stronger in duels, and it’s still too early to assess his aerial game.”

“Neither of the players has Gyökeres’ goal-scoring ability,” he also emphasized, although he noted that they can “complement each other”: “At first, I don’t think so because it would alter the team’s tactical setup, its structure. Maybe towards the end of a match, when the team needs to play more directly and have more presence in the box. Suárez, as we saw against Casa Pia, has already shown signs that he can drop deeper and link up play. Both can coexist towards the end of a game. For now, I think it’s too soon.”

Regarding Viktor Gyökeres, Paulo Alves ultimately disagrees that the Swedish international did everything alone at Sporting: “I don’t think Sporting was less democratic because of Gyökeres. They simply had a player with certain characteristics who stood out for his goal-scoring instinct. Without this player, they have to integrate everyone else in a simple and objective way.”

“The players who have come in have brought new things to the team and are well integrated. That’s how great teams are built. Sporting has done this well and the coaches have to adapt,” concluded the current football coach.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇵🇹 here.