Borussia Dortmund's Serhou Guirassy: "I'm not a born goalscorer"
Borussia Dortmund forward Serhou Guirassy has scored prolifically in the Bundesliga and the UEFA Champions League this season in a career-best campaign, but the late bloomer insists "I'm not surprised."
Guirassy arrived back in Germany ahead of the 2022/23 season when he joined VfB Stuttgart on loan. At the age of 26, he returned to German football having scored a modest 31 goals in 109 Ligue 1 matches with Lille, Amiens and Rennes. He had only reached double figures once in that time, scoring 10 for Amiens in the 2020/21 Ligue 1 season, but he bettered that immediately as he struck 11 times in 22 Bundesliga outings and also found the net in the relegation play-off win over Hamburg to end on 14 goals in 26 competitive appearances.
He then ran amok in 2023/24, finishing second only to Bayern Munich's Harry Kane in the Bundesliga scoring charts as he plundered a goal a game in 28 German top-flight matches to help Stuttgart finish league runners-up, and scoring 30 times in as many competitive outings.
Watch: All of Serhou Guirassy's Bundesliga goals
Guirassy has already improved on that tally in his first season at Dortmund. with his four goals against Union Berlin on Matchday 23 helping to take him to 14 Bundesliga strikes in just 21 games with 10 goals in 11 UEFA Champions League outings. And his secret to flipping the goalscoring switch? Well, there isn't one.
"I understand that my form might surprise some, but I'm not surprised," said Guirassy in an interview with French media. "I have had two crazy seasons, but I've not changed anything. I'm not working more, I'm not sleeping more, I'm not doing more video analysis. It's just a question of confidence. And I have understood that at the highest level, talent isn't enough. You have to push through the pain barrier in challenges, in the effort you put in, in making high-intensity runs again and again, more quickly and more frequently than your opponents. Perhaps that is where the change has come from."
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The incredible explosion in form of Guirassy, who was born in France but plays international football for Guinea - the country of his family's origins - is all the more eye-opening given he scored just four goals in 21 Bundesliga appearances after joining Cologne in 2016. He suffered relegation with the Billy Goats in 2017/18, but struck just twice in 16 Bundesliga 2 games before leaving for Amiens in the January 2019 window.
The suffering and the doubts were all part of the process to make him the player he is today.
"I wasn't born a goalscorer, I've become one. In fact, I haven't always been a forward. At the start, I was a centre-back, then a midfielder," said Guirassy, who rates Brazilian legend Ronaldo as the "best number 9 of all-time" just ahead of a Bundesliga legend, former Dortmund and Bayern forward Robert Lewandowski.
"They know how to do everything: dribble, score, participate in build-up play. A good number 9 is a useful player thanks to his goals, but not only that. He has to stand out thanks to his passes, his work rate, his commitment in challenges. If I score but don't play well, I'm going to be honest enough to say to myself, 'OK, you scored, but you played terribly.'"
The fruitful understanding Guirassy built with Deniz Undav and Chris Führich at Stuttgart has been replaced by telepathic play between himself and the likes of Jamie Gittens, Julian Brandt and Karim Adeyemi with Dortmund's tip of the black-and-yellow spear fully aware of his role in Niko Kovač's gameplan.
"In Dortmund, just like before in Stuttgart, I know what I have to do: play my game. When I have to participate in play, I do. When I have to make a run or track back, I do it. I talk a lot to my teammates, and even if my job is to score goals, I don't hesitate to pass rather than shoot," he explained to France Football magazine before adding something that only a true goalscorer could say.
"There's one thing that I love, and that's the noise of the net; I have in mind the goal I scored against Sporting [in the Champions League], when you heard it well, and it's really nice. When I score, I get an adrenaline boost. The joy that it brings everyone is great. When you start to get a taste for that, you want to do it again and again."
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