The 2025-26 season hasn’t gone to plan for Liverpool Football Club, with the Reds stumbling hard in their attempted title defence after a busy summer that saw them make multiple record signings. Not all perhaps
is lost just yet, and there have been promising signs in December, but it’s fallen short of expectations.
Unless you’re talking about Hugo Ekitike, that is. Liverpool signed the 23-year-old French international from Frankfurt over the summer in an £80M+ deal—and somehow that didn’t make him one of those record signings—and the young striker has instantly taken to life in the Premier League and become a fan favourite.
“I know what people expect,” Ekitike said this week, reflecting on his season to date. “I have my expectations too. I’m just working on it to be as good as people expect me to be and I know I’m in a place I was dreaming to be. I’ve been to so many places and you always have something to reach. I think that’s what football is.
“I always think that football makes you tired not physically but mentally—because if you want to get to the top and achieve things, it’s always about do it again and again and again. Because if tomorrow I score a brace and then say, ‘I’m really good,’ it can stops. And obviously I want to be the best—that’s why I’m playing.”
And while Liverpool have stumbled in the first half of the season, given the quality in the squad and the club’s history over the past decade expectations remain high for a turnaround and for this team, this group, to achieve something significant this season. Which is a big part of why Ekitike wanted to join the club.
For a player striving to be the best, and then for a striker striving to be the best, it’s about scoring goals and creating chances and doing it on the biggest stage with the goal of winning the biggest trophies while putting in eye-popping performances and piling up the stats. And that, all of that, is what Eikitike wants.
“I know I have so many things to improve,” he added. “A striker needs goals to be alive, but sometimes I don’t get an assist, I don’t get a goal, but I know I made a good run for someone so he’s gonna score. But if you don’t have that pressure, if people don’t care, that means you’re not in the right place. I’m in the right place.”
