Hugo Ekitike joins Liverpool: Eintracht Frankfurt striker completes £79m transfer to Premier League champions

Hugo Ekitike has signed for Liverpool in a deal worth £79m (€91.5m) from Eintracht Frankfurt.

Liverpool will pay an initial fee of £69m (€80m) plus £10m (€12.5m) in add-ons for the striker as their summer spending edges towards £300m.

Similar to the Florian Wirtz deal, the majority of the bonuses in Ekitike’s move are tied to Liverpool’s trophy success and the player making a significant contribution.

Liverpool made their move for Ekitike last week after being told Newcastle striker Alexander Isak is not for sale. Newcastle had a club-record offer of £70m for Ekitike rejected by Frankfurt.

Sky Sports News has been told that Liverpool were comfortable with Newcastle making the first move, as they knew Frankfurt were looking for a bidding war – so the Reds stayed away.

Once Newcastle were close to an agreement, Liverpool entered negotiations, similar to how they signed Luis Diaz from Porto when Tottenham Hotspur were close to doing a deal in January 2022.

One source claims Manchester United made a last-ditch attempt to swoop for Ekitike, but the player had his heart set on Liverpool.

The 23-year-old was an unused substitute during his side’s pre-season game against FSV Frankfurt on July 19 and after the game, Frankfurt boss, quoted by Sky Germany, said Ekitike’s departure is “a bitter loss”.

Ekitike scored 22 goals in 48 games across all competitions last season for Frankfurt as he helped them qualify for the Champions League.

Liverpool see him as a multi-functional centre forward who primarily plays as a No 9 but can also drop into a second striker role, or operate wide.

The club believes Ekitike has the potential to become one of the best strikers in the world if he continues on this trajectory.

Liverpool are now the league’s biggest spenders – but how?

Liverpool are now the Premier League’s biggest spenders, with their summer spree now verging on £300m.

The £79m deal for Hugo Ekitike has taken Liverpool’s spending to £295.5m, which is over £75m more than the next biggest spenders in Chelsea.

Liverpool have even spent more than Manchester City and Arsenal combined – the third and fourth biggest spenders – so far.

Tottenham are the fourth biggest spenders with £110.7m spent, just above newly-promoted Sunderland who have spent £107m already.

But how can Liverpool afford Ekitike having already spent a club-record fee to bring Florian Wirtz to Anfield earlier this summer?

Well, the club’s financial records indicated they could potentially lose a further £200m this summer and still be compliant with Profit & Sustainability Rules (PSR) – where clubs are permitted to lose £105m over a three-year period.

According to football finance expert Swiss Ramble, the Reds’ most recent financial results showed Liverpool have actually made £48m in the current three-year PSR period, partly due to modest recent transfer spend.

That means Liverpool can lose a further £158m and still be compliant next summer.

And while Liverpool have already spent around £185m on new players in the current window – including a fee of up to £116m for Wirtz – the Reds posted a club record revenue of £613.8m for the 2023-24 season, partly due to commercial success.

That figure will only increase on the 2024-25 season accounts given Liverpool added Champions League football, knockout qualification for that tournament and also became Premier League champions.

Academy product Jarell Quansah has already joined Bayer Leverkusen in a £35m deal that represents 100 per cent profit under PSR rules, and the Reds could further boost sales figures by the end of the summer.

And earlier in the summer, Brentford signed backup Reds goalkeeper Caoimhin Kelleher for an initial £12.5m.

Darwin Nunez, Harvey Elliott and Luiz Diaz are all further potential departures, although a Diaz exit is currently less likely despite Bayern Munich’s attempts to prise him away.

What have Liverpool seen in the forward at Frankfurt?

Ekitike is a multi-functional centre-forward who can operate as a No.9 but has the ability to fulfil other roles too. As such, Liverpool feel they are signing a high-performing player who is capable of justifying this price tag – and with huge potential to improve.

Much has been made of the similarity between the French forward and Isak, the Newcastle striker who would have been many clubs’ top target this summer had it not been for the prohibitive costs of the deal. Ekitike matches up on many metrics.

Radar comparing Alexander Isak and Hugo Ekitike

In fact, the numbers suggest that he brings others into play even more, a team player who makes intelligent runs with and without the ball. Ekitike can stretch defences by attacking the space in behind on transition but is also creative operating in tight spaces.

Critics might point to Isak’s superior scoring record – Ekitike registered 15 goals in the Bundesliga last season – but Liverpool may well regard the underlying numbers as more encouraging and evidence that Ekitike could even be undervalued in the current market.

Data experts would take the view that Ekitike’s expected-goals figure, which was among the highest in the Bundesliga last season, proves that he is a player whose physicality and intelligent movement sees him arrive in good situations time and time again.

Such numbers tend to regress to the mean. The club would prefer to invest in a player whose numbers are likely to trend upwards. If Ekitike can do that then – even at an initial price of £69m – Liverpool could come to see their investment in him as a bargain.

Ekitike ready for the next step after Bundesliga breakthrough

Sky Sports’ Adam Bate:

When Hugo Ekitike was still a teenager at Stade Reims, the coaching staff prepared a development plan for him. They analysed the performances of Kylian Mbappe and then picked out two more players that Ekitike might realistically aspire to replicate.

“These were players with similar profiles from teams that were better than our team, but not at the distance Paris Saint-Germain were from us,” Oscar Garcia, Reims’ then head coach, told Sky Sports. “We challenged him to reach the level of the other two strikers.”

On the face of it, that was a perfectly reasonable short-term target. Prior to his final season at Reims, Ekitike had not even scored a goal in France’s top tier. He had spent the second half of the previous campaign on loan at Danish club Vejle Boldklub.

He returned to Reims as the fourth-choice forward but soon forced Oscar to reassess. Soon after that, the two strikers whose level he had been encouraged to hit were no longer in his sights. “Within months, he wanted to reach the same level as Mbappe.”

It is a tale that offers a glimpse into the mindset of the Eintracht Frankfurt forward who has long been linked with a move to the Premier League.

“He always was a talented player but some coaches did not like him because of his profile and sometimes because of his character,” concedes Oscar. “They were thinking he was a little bit arrogant. He always wanted to be compared with the best ones.”