An agent involved in the negotiations surrounding Hugo Ekitik\u00e9 says the striker was set to join Newcastle United before Liverpool intervened.<\/p>\n
Ali Barat, who says he worked on behalf of Eintracht Frankfurt, described a process he considered complete until a late contact from Liverpool changed the outcome. \u201cI was working on behalf of Eintracht Frankfurt to bring him to Newcastle ,\u201d Barat told Tuttosport . \u201cI stayed in Germany for 10 days. We agreed everything with the German club and the player, then Liverpool called him and he chose Anfield.\u201d Barat added that the Reds were only hours away from missing out on the French forward, and that Isak would ultimately end up at Anfield as well.<\/p>\n
The Ekitik\u00e9 story was not isolated. Florian Wirtz rejected an expected move to Bayern Munich and instead completed a \u00a3116 million ($156.6 million) transfer to Anfield, according to the report. Bayern honorary president Uli Hoene\u00df spoke on Doppelpass about his club\u2019s business and took aim at rivals over several signings.<\/p>\n
Hoene\u00df referenced Newcastle\u2019s spending on Nick Woltemade, accusing them of using \u201cMonopoly money\u201d to secure that signature, and then turned his attention to the Wirtz deal. \u201cWe\u2019re very satisfied at FC Bayern,\u201d\u201d Hoene\u00df began. \u201cWe are the real winners of the summer transfer window. We have a strong team and didn\u2019t need to strengthen it much.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, we would have liked to have Florian Wirtz, but we\u2019d never have bought him for \u20ac150 million.\u201d<\/p>\n
The account from Barat reinforces how quickly transfer situations can change when multiple clubs engage late in negotiations. In this case, what Barat describes as an almost-finalised agreement with Eintracht and Newcastle was overturned when Liverpool made a late approach and the player opted for Anfield.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Agent Ali Barat says Liverpool called Hugo Ekitik\u00e9 after a deal with Eintracht and Newcastle Anfield.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2582,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,194],"tags":[59,206,951],"class_list":["post-2583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-newcastle-united","tag-featured","tag-florian-wirtz","tag-hugo-ekitike-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583","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=2583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}