Tributes to Jota and Silva before Liverpool friendly
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Daily Mirror
28 minutes ago
- Daily Mirror
Liverpool dressing room sent clear message after Hugo Ekitike's behaviour caused a stir
With Hugo Ekitike closing in on a move to Liverpool, the Premier League champions' dressing room will soon welcome the Frenchman's reported excitable nature behind the scenes Hugo Ekitike is set to bring a fun-loving mood to Liverpool 's dressing room, according to his former captain. The Frenchman is expected to sign for the Premier League champions after agreeing a deal to sign the Eintracht Frankfurt star. According to The Athletic, the two clubs have agreed on a £69m up-front fee with £10m in add-ons, with Ekitike having already agreed personal terms with Arne Slot's side. The 23-year-old enjoyed a career-best campaign with the Bundesliga side last season, scoring 22 goals and contributing 12 assists across all competitions. Ekitike spent a season and a half in Germany in his first permanent transfer outside his native France. Before signing for Paris Saint-Germain in 2023, the striker had begun his professional career with his boyhood club, Reims. It was in 2021 that he spent the season on loan at Danish Superliga side Vejle, as he joined the club in the January transfer window. Despite spending just a number of months in Denmark, he had a positive impact, according to Vejle's captain at the time, Jacob Schoop. Speaking to BBC Sport, a smiling Schoop recalled the fond memories of Ekitike's stint at the club as he let the Frenchman's future Liverpool team-mates in on the lively character they'll be getting. "He was always in a good mood, and he liked to have some fun in the dressing room," he said. "If there was a song on the speaker he would be dancing. That's not really the Danish culture - most of us were more reserved! He was a happy boy, and even though he didn't play as much in the beginning, he trained well and had a really good attitude. "The joy he had for playing was amazing to see. Even during a tough session, he'd still be laughing, finding fun in beating players one-v-one, or putting in that little bit extra." While he finished with just three goals and one assist for Vejle, his quality was clear to see, said Schoop. "There was a game against Sonderjyske that if we won, we avoided relegation. Hugo was unbelievable in that game," he says. "That's the sign of a big game player - to step up and find that bit extra." Ahead of his planned medical this week, Ekitike is expected to fly out to Hong Kong to join up with his Liverpool team-mates who touched down in the region on Monday for a 10-day pre-season tour. The impending arrival of Ekitike only adds to the speculation surrounding Darwin Nunez's future. Nunez is expected to depart Anfield this summer after three years at the club. Despite the likelihood of the 26-year-old leaving Merseyside, he has enjoyed a positive start to pre-season that began with a goal in Liverpool's 3-1 win over Preston North End earlier this month. He followed that up with a first-half hat-trick in a behind-closed-doors 5-0 friendly victory over Stoke City on Sunday.
BBC News
28 minutes ago
- BBC News
Fee agreed with Frankfurt for Ekitike
Liverpool have agreed a fee of £69m with £10m in add-ons with Eintracht Frankfurt for striker Hugo 23-year-old now has permission to travel to complete a medical and agree personal terms with the Premier League completed his first full season with Frankfurt in the 2024-25 campaign, scoring 22 goals and claiming 12 assists in 48 appearances, as they secured Champions League football with a third-placed finish in the Sport's Sami Mokbel said the starting point of Liverpool's move for Ekitike came at the end of last his medical progresses well, he could join the Reds squad for their pre-season tour in Asia.
BBC News
28 minutes ago
- BBC News
How Ekitike shows Slot shift towards Klopp tactics
Arne Slot's summer reshuffle was already the most significant by a reigning Premier League champion in the competition's Wirtz's arrival points to a reconstruction of the Liverpool midfield. Deals for Jeremie Frimpong and Milos Kerkez mark the end of the celebrated full-back pairing of Trent Alexander-Arnold and Andy Robertson. But the expected arrival of Hugo Ekitike is the final flourish that makes it practically a full-scale is not Jurgen Klopp's team any yet, as the Bundesliga stars file in, it curiously looks as though Slot is taking Liverpool on a journey back towards his predecessor's ideas. Before we consider how and why Ekitike will have an impact on Slot's tactics, it's worth looking at the headline numbers to show why Liverpool are prepared to spend £69m, with £10m in add-ons, on the scored 15 goals and provided eight assists in 31 Bundesliga games last season, totalling the fifth-most goal involvements in the division. He was also involved in the fifth-most 'attacking sequences' in the Bundesliga. That can be interpreted as showing the quality of Ekitike's all-round game, whether holding up the ball, running into channels, or bursting in that respect – in most respects, in fact – he is very similar to Alexander Isak, albeit with considerably more flair to his game and a penchant for taking players on in the is particularly adept at setting up team-mates, too, creating more chances form open play (44) in 2024-25 than any other Bundesliga only slight concern is that Ekitike is a little raw in front of goal. He took 117 shots in the Bundesliga last season, more than anyone else, but converted a disappointing 12.8%, leading to an xG under-performance of 6.6 goals – a bigger gap than any other player in Europe's 'Big Five' leagues. But that just means Ekitike needs a little tuning worth nothing that when Isak was the same age, playing for Real Sociedad in 2021-22, he scored just six goals in 32 league games, under-performed his xG by 3.8, and converted just 8.2% of his shots. In an era when utilising attacking transitions are of increasing importance, Ekitike's smart assists, his give-and-go moves, and his line-breaking carries into the final third are all hallmarks of the elite modern number a case in point, he topped the 2024-25 Bundesliga charts for shot-ending carries (44) and ranked fifth for attempted dribbles (126), while also scoring more goals from fast breaks (4) than anyone else in the why Ekitike's expected arrival represents such an interesting shift for his debut year, Slot tamed the wilder aspects of Klopp's football to create a slower, calmer Liverpool, living up to widely held expectations of a manager who once described Pep Guardiola teams as the "ultimate joy in football".But Ekitike represents a shift back the other way, perhaps reflecting a similar realisation to the one that recently struck Guardiola."Modern football is not positional," Guardiola told TNT Sports a few month ago, not long after signing a direct and transition-centric forward in Omar Marmoush, Ekitike's striker partner at the time. "You have to ride the rhythm."Slot, too, appears to be making concessions to the way modern Premier League football is changing. It's telling that Ekitike will arrive in the same summer as another Bundesliga star, Germany international Wirtz, forming a new-look attack built on piercing forward movement and an inclination to weave through the thirds as quickly as two should combine superbly. Both are sharp one-touch passers between the lines, both love to crash the box, and both were sculpted in fast-transitioning Bundesliga is a clear step change for Slot and, to an extent, a surprising turn back towards the 'heavy metal' days of Klopp. Is Slot making major revisions to Liverpool's formation? Along with Wirtz and the two new full-backs, Ekitike points to a different Liverpool 2024-25, some 47 of Liverpool's 86 goals (55%) were scored or assisted by Mohamed Salah, who ran the right wing almost on his own as Alexander-Arnold drifted contrast, Frimpong is a very attacking, very wide right-back. That should take some of the pressure off Salah, but it might also see the Egyptian move infield to support the new creator-in-chief Wirtz, Liverpool's first proper number 10 in weight to that theory is Ekitike's history of playing in a strike partnership. He was arguably at his best in a 3-5-2 alongside Marmoush at Frankfurt, with whom he regularly swapped positions in a fluid forward was also more often than not playing in a two at Reims, where he made his name. Could Slot be planning something similar with Ekitike and Salah?In a 4-2-3-1, Frimpong's aggressive wing play on the right could free Salah to drift inside and operate as something like a split striker alongside Ekitike, with Wirtz and a number eight sitting just would certainly be direct, dynamic and straight-lined, and would certainly be ready for a turn towards fast-transitioning football next it's just one of the options available to Slot now he has such a versatile number nine leading the can drop like Roberto Firmino or get in behind, can play alone or in a two, and can play transitional football or in a possession-centric is the real deal: the centre-forward of the calibre and tactical dexterity pretty much every 'Big Six' club has been looking Slot continues with Guardiola-like patience or swings back towards Klopp-like verticality, Liverpool's chances of retaining the Premier League title just improved.
