Why Liverpool and Newcastle have gone to war for £85m Hugo Ekitike: The 'next Thierry Henry', a natural goalscorer and big-game player - but with one catch

When Hugo Ekitike looked for all the world like he had joined Newcastle from Stade Reims three years ago, all the chatter among those in the North East was that they were signing the ‘next Thierry Henry’.

Football is famously reticent to overhype raw, unproven talents, but here was another premature comparison at least framed by what the eye could see.

Both tall, slight and elegant in stride. Both centre forwards, who like to drift wide to the left and run at defenders with those long legs and loping gait. And both near impossible to stop when they do. That's why he is at the centre of a huge battle for his services this summer.

Newcastle have already had one £70million offer turned down in the last few days and now Liverpool have opened talks, having also made a sensational approach to sign Alexander Isak from the Magpies for a British-record fee. Arsenal and Manchester United have also shown an interest this summer.

Whoever wins the race will need to fork out the best part of £85m, which would smash Newcastle's club-record signing (£63m for Isak, who they captured in 2022 when they missed out on Ekitike), and sit second for Liverpool behind only new £116m arrival Florian Wirtz.

The inflation in the 23-year-old's market value - Reims accepted a £25.6m bid from Newcastle in 2022 before Paris Saint-Germain swooped in for the France Under-21 international on an initial loan - is reflective of his extraordinary rise. He lasted just two years in the French capital before Eintracht Frankfurt and their striker factory came calling.

Ekitike is the latest in a long line of Frankfurt forwards to command a huge fee after Omar Marmoush, Luka Jovic, Sebastien Haller and Randal Kolo Muani. Now the Bundesliga club want another big cheque after Ekitike carried their hopes alone on his shoulders when Marmoush joined Manchester City for £59m in January.

Those who watched them regularly think Ekitike is the better of the two, and it took him just six minutes of Frankfurt’s Europa League quarter-final against Tottenham in April to show it.

He received the pass a little inside Spurs’ half, drove at retreating full back Pedro Porro, cut inside, shifted the ball out of his feet and rifled his shot into the bottom corner before the swarm of white shirts could do anything about it.

Newcastle did OK out of missing out on Ekitike a first time, with Isak going on to become one of the most coveted strikers in world football as a replacement. But club insiders were miffed by how the deal collapsed, because their analysis had led them to believe the Frenchman was going to be a superstar.

It looks like those analysts were right. Ekitike finished on 22 goals for the season in all competitions, firing Frankfurt to third in the Bundesliga and helping them qualify for the Champions League.

‘He is a complete striker,’ Christopher Michel, Frankfurt reporter at Absolut Fussball told Mail Sport. ‘He’s fast, he can shoot with both feet. He can head the ball well. He’s brilliant with his back to goal. He’s tall. He can dribble. He provides assists. He can be a playmaker. He has the potential to be one of the best strikers in Europe. I even think he has more talent than Omar Marmoush.’

Ekitike came through the ranks at his hometown club Reims, signing his first professional contract in 2020 aged 17 and scoring 10 top-flight goals in the 2021-22 season as a 19-year-old. Coaches saw the talent in him early on.

‘We saw huge potential, something natural, with a feeling for scoring a goal,’ said his Reims reserve team coach Franck Chalencon. ‘He’s a very clever player, which saw him adapt and understand the expectations of professional football. It’s very rare he plays a game without creating a chance himself.

Before he became a first-team regular, he had joined Danish Superliga side Vejle on a season-long loan – and his new team-mates were in for a shock when they saw their new signing dancing around the dressing room any time a song came on.

‘Ekitike loves being in the limelight,’ Manni Sedlbauer, a football reporter at German outlet Sport1 told Mail Sport. ‘He’s very self-confident. He plans unusual celebrations, wears his trousers low and drives a Lamborghini. He’s always wanted to be the best and has worked hard for it. He belongs to this new generation of strikers.’

Yet Ekitike struggled early on with the physical demands of the Danish league and needed French team-mate Kevin Yamga to help him with the language barrier.

‘I remember a humble and hard-working kid,’ Jacob Kruger, Vejle’s sporting director at the time told Mail Sport. ‘He had difficulties at the beginning because it was his first time out of France, he spoke very little English and he needed to adapt to Danish football.

‘His club was quite angry that he didn’t play and I had them on the phone several times, but I never had any complaints from Hugo. He kept working hard and just waiting for his chance.

‘There was one game where the coach changed almost the whole team for a cup game because we were close to relegation, but Hugo still wasn’t in the starting line-up. His club was totally p****d off! Hugo didn’t lose faith in himself, kept working hard and when he got his chance he took it.’

Ekitike scored three goals in eight games during the league’s relegation round to keep Vejle in the division, including a brace against rivals AC Horsens as well as two assists in a crucial game against Sonderjyske.

‘If we won, we avoided relegation,’ Jacob Schoop, his captain at Vejle, told the BBC. ‘Hugo was unbelievable in that game. That's the sign of a big-game player, to step up and find that bit extra.’

‘He was a top, top talent,’ added Kruger. ‘We could all see that. He had some extraordinary skills, with his pace, technique and mentality, and was a good finisher. You could see he had the whole package, but it would be a little too smart to say I saw it all and he would end up like this!’

Newcastle first tried to sign him in January 2022, the first window after the Saudi takeover, before nearly getting the job done in the summer. However, the bright lights of Paris turned his head and he moved to the French giants.

He made 25 appearances as PSG won the league title in 2023 alongside Lionel Messi, Neymar and Kylian Mbappe, but struggled to make his mark.

Former PSG midfielder Eric Rabesandratana slammed his ‘mental weakness’ and claimed his attitude did not ‘correspond at all to what you expect from him as a young person, and especially one who should impose himself at PSG’.

Ekitike was shipped out on loan to Frankfurt in February last year before joining permanently in April. That’s where the star began to shine, both on the pitch and off it. 

‘He’s a bit flamboyant,’ added Michel. ‘You can see it in his style of clothes.’ Ekitike recently posted a picture on Instagram of him wearing a tracksuit covered in diamantes and a pink woolly hat.

He caused a stir among Frankfurt fans, too, during the winter the break when he shared a video doing warm training in Dubai wearing a Borussia Dortmund shirt.

Since Marmoush’s departure, Ekitike went from playing in a front two to proving he has what it takes to lead a line on his own, helped by former Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich playmaker Mario Gotze pulling the strings behind him.

‘He benefits from Gotze’s brilliant passes and is ice-cold in front of goal,’ said Sedlbauer. ‘Defensive work, on the other hand, is not always Hugo. Nevertheless, he is one of the best strikers in the Bundesliga, perhaps even in Europe.’

Ekitike has not escaped the notice of the legendary Arsenal striker to whom he has been compared.

‘I’ve spoken to Thierry about him a lot,’ Micah Richards, Henry’s co-pundit for the Champions League on CBS, told the Rest Is Football podcast. ‘He says he’s really not a frustrating player, but one minute he looks amazing and the next minute he does not do the basics very well.

‘He said if he gets it right and improves then his ceiling could be very, very high.’