Football Bet of the Day: Gyokeres to shine on the international stage

Sweden welcome Albania to the Friends Arena in Stockholm on Monday evening for a friendly. The hosts will be looking to get themselves looking sharp for this summer's Euros in Germany with a new head coach at the helm in Jon Dahl Tomasson, formerly of Blackburn Rovers.

It may be an international friendly but we are expecting strong lineups from both teams for this encounter. In terms of how this one will play out, we're expecting one Sweden player in particular to have a huge role on the pitch and that is striker Viktor Gyokeres. The striker has been in excellent form this season and our football bet of the day for Monday is for him to score at least twice.

After leaving Coventry City for Sporting CP in the summer, the Sweden star has continued his excellent form in front of goal. In Liga Portugal this term, the 25-year-old has scored 22 goals in 24 appearances, having also provided nine assists.

Across all competitions he has scored 36 and provided 14 assists, taking his domestic goal contributions for the season to 50 - astonishing. He has become the first Sporting player to do so since Bruno Fernandes in 2018-19. He reached the milestone in stunning fashion with a hat-trick against Boavista last weekend.

His form has carried on through to this international break as he netted in Sweden's 5-2 defeat to Portugal on Thursday. It was a disappointing result for Tomasson's first game in charge but he will be hoping that things will be better against Albania, with his side as the 8/13 favourites to take the victory.

The Dane will look to star striker Gyokeres to lead the line on Monday and will look to help mould the Sporting CP star into a devastating player on the international stage as he has been domestically this term.

Gyokeres will be happy with having scored against Portugal despite the defeat, but he will be rubbing his hands together to have a run out against an Albanian side that were comfortably beaten 3-0 by Chile on Friday night. However, the Eagles had been on an eight-game unbeaten run across their Euro 2024 qualifying campaign before that loss, so Sweden will still need to be wary.

They will have confidence themselves of course because they boast one of the best strikers in the world right now and this game is going to be played on home soil. Gyokeres has not seen world-class returns when he has taken to the field for his national team but with the way he has been excelling in Portugal, it doesn't look like he could be too far away from cracking his goalscoring formula in a Sweden shirt.

We do think Monday's clash with Albania will provide him with the perfect opportunity to take a step closer to becoming a star at international level. He has the quality to score more than once and 15/2 offers great value on him to score two in this friendly.