Hugo Ekitike: Baller or Bust?

Why Liverpool Are Signing Hugo Ekitike.

Liverpool look set to sign 23 year-old French forward Hugo Ekitike from Eintracht Frankfurt for a reported €95m. Ekitike has attracted a vast amount of interest from various premier league clubs this summer including; Chelsea, Newcastle, Manchester United and of course Liverpool but the Frenchman has supposedly agreed to join the latter and personal terms are no issue. With that being said, I’m going to be breaking down his profile, what Liverpool fans can expect from him and whether or not I think he will be a success for The Reds.

Player Profile:

For anybody who has watched Hugo Ekitike the first thing they’d notice is his size - standing at 6 '3, his slim frame makes him look even bigger than he is given that he’s also only 76kg. He is also surprisingly good with his feet with a centre of gravity seemingly much lower than what you’d expect from someone of his height. This makes him really unique in the way he evades tackles and keeps the ball as he’s never really having to rely on his size to do so because of how good he is technically. He loves to drop deep to pick the ball up with runners ahead of him and his ball carrying and creative passing numbers back up his proficiency at doing so with; 3 progressive carries,1.9 successful take ons, 1.2 passes into the box, 3.5 shot creating actions and 1.6 key passes (all p90 stats). These numbers all rank very highly compared to all other forwards in Europe’s top 5 leagues with all 5 statistics ranking in at least the 93rd percentile. He can also excel with minimum touches of the ball as opposed to being the ball carrier too, many of his finishes come with 1 touch inside the box and much of his hold up play comes with him using flick ons again with just a single touch.

What could we expect from him in a Liverpool shirt?

As previously mentioned Hugo Ekitike is a forward that loves to drop deep to facilitate his teams’ build up, this will really benefit Liverpool as it did when Roberto Firmino was at the club. Initially, Liverpool went down a different route post Firmino bringing in Darwin Nunez for £64m from Benfica but Nunez’s qualities are almost a direct opposite to what Hugo Ekitike can offer them. Ekitike is a perfect blend of; technicality, pace and power, many times during his time at Frankfurt he would be spearheading counter attacks with his impressive ball carrying skills and creating opportunities for either himself or team mates at the end of it. Ekitike can mould into many different roles that Arne Slot may need him to perform, his size means he’s a constant box threat, he can run the channels well and as mentioned he can happily drop deep and link play.

In the below images, you can see that Ekitike picks up possession about 20 yards into Wolfsburg’s half with a 4v3 in his teams’ favour, he carries the ball right until the edge of the oppositions box before playing a perfectly weighted pass to his overlapping fullback Phillip Maxx which allows Maxx to strike the ball first time and score by catching the keeper off guard - this doesn’t happen without Ekitike’s deft weight of pass. This is a constant pattern in the way in which he plays which is also very suited to the way in which Arne Slot has gotten his Liverpool side to play a lot of the time, Arne Slot loves his teams to use overloads in the first phase of play to bait the opposing team into pressing his defenders (who are very comfortable on the ball) which in turn manufactures plenty of counter attacking opportunities after the press is beat.

Now, having spoken about Ekitike’s ability on the ball another part of Hugo’s game in which he excels is his off ball movement, he has almost assassin like tendencies in the way in which he moves to get himself into a defenders blind side. As you can see in the below picture former team-mate Omar Marmoush receives the ball wide and Ekitike makes a movement behind the defender as opposed to going across the defender. This creates a slightly more difficult pass for Marmoush to execute but gives himself more space after receiving the pass, it also ensures that he is in the defenders blind spot despite the fact the defender is expecting Ekitike to run across him. This is very unique, the majority of strikers in this instance would look to get their arm across the defender and run across him to take the defender out of the game, instead Ekitike trusts in his team mates ability and makes a movement behind the defender meaning he has no idea how to defend the pass from Marmoush due to the fact that the defender has no visuals on where Ekitike is.

How many Premier League goals will Ekitike score this season?

Final Verdict

Hugo Ekitike has just 1 league campaign where he started over 30 games and that was last season (24/25) but we must not forget that he spent the best part of 18 months between July of 2022 and February 2024 at Paris Saint-Germain where he was fighting for minutes behind the likes of Kylian Mbappe, before his move to Frankfurt. It’s at Frankfurt where he has excelled and blossomed into one of Europe’s most exciting young strikers. His move to the Premier League is a huge step up which often comes with a lot of pressure, however, at Liverpool that pressure may not be as high as you’d think. Liverpool’s main talisman is Mohammed Salah and no new signing will change that, Ekitike is coming into a club where he is not expected to be the main man who has to score 20 + league goals because Liverpool already have that player. This will hopefully help ease the pressure of a big money move and help Ekitike play his game with more comfort which in turn would result in better output.