Liverpool have confirmed scans show Hugo Ekitik\u00e9 has suffered a rupture of the Achilles tendon in his right foot. The club statement read: \u201cscans on the issue have subsequently confirmed a rupture of the Achilles tendon.\u201d The injury will rule the 23-year-old out of the 2026 World Cup with France and could keep him sidelined for the remainder of the year.<\/p>\n
Ekitik\u00e9 moved to Liverpool from Eintracht Frankfurt last summer in a deal worth up to $107 million (\u00a379 million). In 45 appearances he scored 17 goals and supplied six assists, producing 15 goal contributions in the Premier League alone. Dominik Szoboszlai and Mohamed Salah are the next highest scorers for the club on 12 and 11 respectively.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard, maybe even unfair,\u201d he posted on social media after the news. \u201cBut I\u2019m grateful this is happening to me here, among you [fans]. I\u2019m not alone. Your strength and your love will be my driving force.\u201d<\/p>\n
The timing complicates Liverpool\u2019s plans. Alexander Isak has returned from a broken leg and the PSG start this week was his first start in the comeback process, but he remains limited in minutes and may struggle to replace Ekitik\u00e9 immediately.<\/p>\n
A ruptured Achilles is among the most severe injuries in football. Early estimates put Ekitik\u00e9\u2019s recovery at nine to 12 months, meaning a return might not come until 2027. Questions remain about whether he can regain the same level of explosiveness and whether the injury will have lasting physical or psychological effects.<\/p>\n
Liverpool supporters have seen similar cases. F\u00e1bio Aur\u00e9lio ruptured his Achilles during a Champions League match in April 2007 and did not resume consistent playing until eight months later; he left Liverpool in 2012 after further injury problems. Callum Hudson-Odoi ruptured his Achilles in 2018\u201319, recovered in five months but never reached his earlier potential and now plays for Nottingham Forest without starting every game. Ruben Loftus-Cheek suffered a near year-long absence and recalled: \u201cI came back from injury but didn\u2019t feel myself, didn\u2019t feel powerful, wasn\u2019t running past people and felt like I lost a lot of muscle and power.\u201d Other examples include Laurent Koscielny and David Beckham, both of whom faced lengthy recoveries after Achilles ruptures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ekitik\u00e9 has ruptured his Achilles; scans confirm the injury. He will miss the 2026 World Cup. 9-12m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12006,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,172,1163],"tags":[1084,1081,1384],"class_list":["post-12007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-epl","category-transfers","tag-achilles-injury","tag-adaptation","tag-broken-leg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}