Not Erling Haaland or Kylian Mbappe, but Serhou Guirassy is the best goalscorer in the top 5 European championships. The Stuttgart striker has just equaled a record that has stood for half a century in the Bundesliga.
One right foot, one left foot, one header, Guirassy showed off his comprehensive skills when scoring a hat-trick to help Stuttgart crush Mainz away from home in round 4 of the Bundesliga (1-3). Coach Sebastian Hoeness’s team rose to 4th on the rankings with a convincing record of winning 3, losing 1. It is worth noting that of Stuttgart’s 14 goals since the beginning of the season, 8 belonged to Serhou Guirassy.
Thereby, the Guinea striker became the first player in the past 56 years to score 8 goals after just the first 4 rounds of the Bundesliga. The closest person to do that was Peter Meyer of M’gladbach in the 1967/68 season with 9 goals in the first 4 rounds. In the past half century, Robert Lewandowski has reached the milestone of 7 goals in the first 4 rounds of the 2020/21 season. But now Serhou Guirassy is doing even better than Bayern’s legendary goalscorer.
Looking broadly at Europe’s top championships, Stuttgart’s striker also has no rivals. The world’s two leading attacking stars, Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappe, have only had 7 goals in the Premier League and Ligue 1 so far. Lautaro Martinez leads Serie A with 5 goals. Even in the Bundesliga, Bayern’s blockbuster contract, Harry Kane, has only scored 4 goals.
“Guirassy brings emotion to gameplay. He is very fast, confident and has surprising moves in the penalty area,” coach Sebastian Hoeness praised his student.
In the win over Mainz, Guirassy opened the scoring with a fierce acceleration, scored the second goal from a very flexible turn and set the score 3-1 with a delicate header over the opponent’s goalkeeper.
Guirassy has a speedy run like Djibril Cisse and soft handling reminiscent of Thierry Henry. The striker born in 1996 landed in Stuttgart in the summer of 2022 on a loan contract from Rennes. After a convincing season with 14 goals/30 matches, the Guinean player was bought by the German team for 9 million euros with a contract until 2026.
Guirassy has talent but his career is quite difficult. Growing up at the Laval academy, Guirassy spent an unsuccessful season at Lille before venturing to Cologne, Amiens, Rennes and now Stuttgart. Even though his club career was not too impressive, Guirassy still made his mark on French youth teams such as U19 (11 matches, 6 goals) or U20 (9 matches, 4 goals).
In 2015, Guirassy, along with Benjamin Pavard and Lucas Hernandez, brought the French U19 team to the European U19 semi-finals. In 2016 at the Toulon international youth tournament, Guirassy shined with 3 goals for the French U20 team in a tournament that also included Jack Grealish. Born in France but with a Guinean father, Guirassy finally chose to play for the Guinea national team from 2022 (7 matches, 2 goals).