He’s scored a whopping 14 goals already and is five ahead of FC Bayern hitman Harry Kane in the race for the Golden Boot. And if anyone here or in the rest of the football world were asked to predict who that might be when the Bundesliga kicked off back in August, I bet few, if any, of us would have said VfB Stuttgart’s Serhou Guirassy.
Apart from Kane, there will have been names such as Thomas Muller, Andrej Kramaric, and Kingsley Coman suggested, but France-born Guirassy would have been a very long shot.
At 6’2” and 27 years of age, he is a powerful figure who is reaching his prime, though both player and club took a hefty blow on Saturday when Guirassy pulled a hamstring during Stuttgart’s 3-0 win away to Union Berlin.
He was substituted 30 minutes after he had already given his side an early lead and is set to be out for a few weeks according to today’s Bundesliga 2023 news.
It’s a minor muscular injury, but hamstrings can be troublesome and Stuttgart head coach Sebastien Hoeness will be careful not to rush Europe’s top scorer back:
“We must and will compensate for his absence as well as possible,” he said.
But I suspect Kane may get close to 14 goals by the time Guirassy returns.
Serhou’s journey to Stuttgart
So how did this scoring sensation, who has fired Stuttgart to second place in the Bundesliga table, land up with Die Roten? Well, he cut his teeth at Laval in Western France before making a €1 million move to Ligue 1 Lille at the age of 19.
After a season in the French top-flight, Guirassy signed for Koln in the Bundesliga a year later, but there he suffered a meniscus injury and muscular problems which pretty much wiped out his first campaign in the German league.
Guirassy recovered for the 2017-18 campaign and scored his first goal in October, away to Bayer Leverkusen, the current league leaders, and he also starred in the Europa League. But with opportunities limited in Koln, he went out on loan to Ligue 2 side Amiens before signing for top-flight outfit Stade Rennes.
By 2019, Guirassy was fully developed as a striker, and he scored 19 goals in 65 appearances for Rennes, many of them from the bench and that persuaded Stuttgart to take him on loan in 2022. And in his first campaign back in Germany, he netted 11 goals in 22 games last season.
Guirassy also opted to play his international football for Guinea for whom he has scored three goals in 10 internationals. In May, Stuttgart opted to activate an option to buy the player and he signed a three-year deal.
Guirassy’s 2023-24 Bundesliga goals so far
The first two months of Guirassy’s career as a fully signed up Roten star have been simply sensational.
He netted his first goal of the season in a 4-0 DFB Pokal win over TSG Balingen before opening his league account with a brace against Bochum, outpacing the defence on both occasions to collect a through ball and rifle an unstoppable shot into the net.
He bagged the consolation in Stuttgart’s only real setback, a 5-1 stuffing at the hands of RB Leipzig, and then he collected another early brace in Stuttgart’s 5-0 win over Freiburg.
Guirassy scored his first hat-trick, goals six, seven, and eight in a 3-1 win over Mainz, planting a powerful header in the 97th minute to confirm the points. And then he bagged two more as Stuttgart beat SV Darmstadt 98 by 3-1.
His first was a screamer, possibly the best of his 14 so far as he collected a pass from Chris Fuhrich and unleashed a long range thunderbolt into the top right corner. His late second showcased his frightening pace and timing as he beat the offside trap to slide home Stuttgart’s third in injury time.
Guirassy’s brilliant hat-trick in a 3-1 win over Wolfsburg briefly lifted Stuttgart to the top of the table before the international break, and his 14th of the campaign set Die Roten on their way to a comfortable victory over Union Berlin.
Of course the SBOTOP Bundesliga 2023 betting odds are heavily backing FC Bayern to retain their title. But for now, VfB Stuttgart are in the group that can challenge the Bavarians, and if Guirassy can return fit and firing, then this could be a phenomenal campaign for Stuttgart fans.
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