Hugo Ekitike’s World Cup Dream in Jeopardy After Injury
Hugo Ekitike’s World Cup dream is suddenly hanging by a thread.
On a night when Liverpool’s Champions League campaign was dismantled by Paris Saint-Germain, the most haunting image was not a goal, a save or a celebration, but a stretcher.
Agony off the ball
Just half an hour into the quarter-final second leg at Anfield, with Liverpool already chasing a 2-0 deficit on aggregate, Ekitike crumpled to the turf with no opponent near him. He immediately clutched his ankle, his face twisted in pain – the sort of reaction that sends a chill through players and staff alike.
Liverpool’s medical team sprinted on and quickly made the call: he was not getting up. A suspected Achilles injury, the kind that can wreck a season and reshape a career, ended his night before it had really begun.
As he was carefully lifted onto the stretcher and taken away, the atmosphere shifted. The game carried on, but for Liverpool and for France, alarm bells were already ringing.
Salah summoned, Liverpool subdued
Arne Slot turned to Mohamed Salah, left out of the starting XI, to replace Ekitike on the right. It felt like the sort of moment from which a star might seize control of a tie.
It never happened. Salah struggled to find rhythm or space, PSG kept Liverpool at arm’s length, and the English side slipped to a 2-0 defeat on the night, 4-0 on aggregate, against the reigning Champions League holders.
The scoreline hurt. The injury cut deeper.
Ekitike, 23, is not just a Liverpool project; he is a France international with a World Cup on the horizon. Every minute he spent in the treatment room after the final whistle only increased the sense that this was more than a bad night in Europe. This could be a turning point in his season – and his summer.
Slot’s concern, Konate’s prayers
Slot did not sugar-coat the situation when asked about his forward after the game.
“Hugo looks really bad but it is difficult to say how bad,” the Liverpool manager admitted. “Let’s see. It doesn’t look good, that is clear. I didn’t see him at half-time and after the game he was already home. I have not spoken to him yet.”
The uncertainty was laced with dread. The visual alone had told its own story.
Ibrahima Konate, who shares both a club dressing room and a national-team camp with Ekitike, spoke with a different kind of weight.
“I think it is bad,” he said, speaking to Prime Video. “I don’t know, I have heard many things, I have no word to talk about that because with the World Cup coming it is very, very hard for him and I send him my prayers."
This was not just a team-mate commenting on an injury. It was a friend staring at the possibility that one of the biggest tournaments of their careers might go on without Ekitike.
A point to prove, a night cut short
The irony will not be lost on anyone in Paris. Ekitike spent two years at PSG and arrived in this tie with something to say to Luis Enrique, who had left him out of his Champions League squad in 2023/24.
Here he was, finally starting against his former club, shoulder to shoulder with Alexander Isak in attack. It was Isak’s first start in four months after ankle surgery, another striker feeling his way back into top-level rhythm.
Half an hour in, that plan was in ruins. Ekitike was gone, Liverpool’s forward line reshuffled again, and the club now fears that their other key striker faces a long spell out at the very moment the season reaches its sharpest edge.
For a player trying to show his old coach what he had become, the stage could not have been bigger. The curtain fell too soon.
PSG count their own casualties
PSG might have been cruising on the scoreboard, but they did not escape unscathed.
Only eight minutes after Ekitike was withdrawn, Nuno Mendes pulled up and limped off, forcing Enrique to send on Lucas Hernandez at left-back. It was another reminder that this tie was being played at a brutal physical cost.
The pattern continued after the interval. Desire Doue, the 20-year-old winger who had scored in the first leg and tormented Liverpool with his direct running, hurtled into the advertising boards under a challenge from Dominik Szoboszlai.
He received treatment, tried to continue, but his body told him the truth. Moving gingerly, clearly uncomfortable, he eventually hobbled off for Bradley Barcola. As Doue left the pitch, Szoboszlai approached to apologise, having appeared to push him in the back before the collision.
PSG advanced, but they did so with strapping, ice packs and fresh concerns of their own.
A brutal twist before the summer
For Liverpool, the exit will sting. For Ekitike, the stakes are far higher.
This was supposed to be the stretch of the season where he sharpened his form, cemented his role, and walked into France’s World Cup camp ready to attack the biggest stage of all. Instead, he left Anfield on a stretcher, his immediate future clouded by scans and medical bulletins.
The diagnosis will come soon enough. The question now is stark: will this be remembered as the night Liverpool went out of Europe, or the night Hugo Ekitike’s World Cup slipped away?
