Liverpool have continued their significant summer investment by adding striker Hugo Ekitike, whose transfer has pushed their spending close to \u00a3300 million in the 2025 off-season. The 23-year-old, having impressed in the 2024-25 season with Eintracht Frankfurt, now faces the challenge of proving himself in the Premier League.<\/p>\n
Fans may catch their first glimpse of Ekitike in action during Liverpool\u2019s upcoming pre-season friendly against AC Milan. However, the striker will sport a temporary squad number, wearing No. 54 for the duration of Liverpool\u2019s pre-season tour in Asia. The club has stated that his permanent number will be “confirmed soon.” This approach is consistent with Liverpool\u2019s handling of all their summer signings, who currently feature unconventional squad numbers. Among them are Florian Wirtz, Jeremie Frimpong, Milos Kerkez, Giorgi Mamardashvili, Freddie Woodman, and \u00c1rmin P\u00e9csi, none of whom have been assigned permanent numbers yet.<\/p>\n
Several numbers remain free at Anfield, including 6, 12, 13, 15, 16, 23, 24, and 25, available for Ekitike. The striker may also have ambitions for the No. 9 shirt, presently worn by Darwin N\u00fa\u00f1ez, depending on the Uruguayan\u2019s future at the club. It is notable that Liverpool have retired the No. 20 jersey as a mark of respect following the tragic loss of Diogo Jota.<\/p>\n
The reason behind the delay in permanent number assignments is the club\u2019s pending new kit deal. Liverpool have been outfitted by Nike since 2020-21 but will switch back to Adidas starting 1 August 2025. The new kits for the 2025-26 season will debut after this transition, prompting the temporary squad number usage during the pre-season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hugo Ekitike wears temporary No. 54 as Liverpool await new Adidas kit release for 2025-26 season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":498,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[59,231,176],"class_list":["post-499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","tag-featured","tag-hugo-ekitike","tag-jeremie-frimpong"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499","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=499"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":720,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499\/revisions\/720"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}