Izquierdo: Goals Make Everyone Happy

Brighton & Hove Albion winger Jose Izquierdo highlighted the happiness shared from scoring goals, after the Colombian picked up the Goal of the Season award at last night’s Players’ Awards Dinner at the Amex Stadium.

The 25-year-old’s strikes against Stoke City at the bet365 Stadium and West Ham United at both the Amex and the London Stadium were nominated for the award, but his wonderful curling effort at home to the Hammers took the accolade with 50% of the vote.

Izquierdo saw off competition from Pascal Gross - who had two goals nominated - and the winger commented on his love for scoring, as well as praising his team-mates for their contributions.

He said, “I’m very happy and proud of this award. It means I’m doing things well - but obviously the help my team-mates give me was also very important for this award.

“The qualities of each player have been shared to make unity, and that’s shown in how we’ve performed this season.

“We say in Spanish language ‘the goals are love’. When you score goals, it makes everyone happy - yourself, the fans and team-mates.

“When you score, it gives you motivation. When you don’t score, you know you’re not going to win the game - but that’s just part of football.

“With my style of play, I like to score goals and I think that’s one of the reasons why Brighton chose me to play for the team.”

Izquierdo has claimed five goals and four assists for the Seagulls this season, but the Colombian admitted he had a difficult start after arriving from Club Brugge last summer.

“It’s been a season of change. I’ve changed everything. I came from a big club in Belgium and I had everything there. I did important things for that club.

“But I changed everything to come here and start a new journey. A lot of people didn’t know me and how I played. My team-mates didn’t know how I moved on the pitch.

“So it was a difficult start at the beginning - the change from a normal league to the Premier League, which is one of the top leagues in the world.

“It was a very difficult change, but when you have resilience, you can work hard to improve a situation. That gave me motivation to keep working every day.”

The Seagulls find themselves seven points clear of the relegation zone with four games remaining, and Izquierdo showed his focus towards making sure Chris Hughton’s team are safe.

“In the end, the most important thing is that we stay in the Premier League for next season.

“We need some more points. We have to play the next set of games like finals, and hopefully we can get the points we need to stay in the Premier League.”