Hugo Ekitike suffered ‘one of the worst injuries in sport’ – how does he come back?
It happened in an instant in the most innocuous of circumstances. But that one moment has left Hugo Ekitike faces a long and painful road back to football.
The Liverpool striker, his club’s top scorer this season having instantly taken to life in the Premier League following a £79million move from Eintracht Frankfurt last summer, went down unchallenged during Tuesday’s Champions League clash with Paris Saint-Germain.
The realisation of how serious the situation was came quickly with the 23-year-old stretchered off the pitch. On Thursday, worst fears were realised when Liverpool confirmed their player had suffered a ruptured Achilles tendon.
Ekitike’s season is over, along with his hopes of featuring for France at this summer’s World Cup. He will also miss a sizeable portion of next season with early estimates suggesting he will be sidelined for nine months.
‘It is absolutely one of the worst injuries an athlete can suffer,’ Stephen Smith, CEO and founder of Kitman Labs which specialises in injury welfare, told Metro. ‘It is extremely debilitating. The timeline estimates and historical injuries of this nature show they take a significant period of time to recover from.’
It is perhaps the injury footballers fear the most and previous cases illustrate how long the road back will be.
Callum Hudson-Odoi’s electric start to life at Chelsea was cut short in April 2019, returning to action after five months. His Blues teammate Ruben Loftus-Cheek on the other hand was out of the game for nine months. ‘I came back from injury but didn’t feel myself, didn’t feel powerful, wasn’t running past people and felt like I lost a lot of muscle and power,’ he said.
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Going back even further, Laurent Koscielny suffered the same injury in May 2018, sitting out for seven months.
‘I heard a crack and I knew it was gone,’ the former Arsenal captain said. ‘I was screaming on the pitch. I remember hitting my hand on the ground several times. It was an atrocious pain.’
Smith compares the Achilles tendon to an elastic band to demonstrate how vital it is for everything a footballer does.
‘If it is a rupture, it is gone. It is gone completely. You don’t half rupture it,’ Smith explained. ‘The power and force that goes through that area is tremendous. It is the strongest tendon in your entire body.
‘Think of it like an elastic band. When your foot hits the ground it stretches and stores all that energy. Then as you push off, it snaps back and releases all that energy to propel you forward. If that elastic band breaks, the connection between your calf and your foot is lost, you can’t generate any push off force to run, jump or accelerate. It stops the player’s ability to perform the most fundamental aspects and movements of the sport. There is no running, no sprinting, no jumping, no changing of direction.’
As of Friday, Ekitike was still to undergo surgery but is expected to do so imminently. After that, the healing process begins. There will be months of waiting for the France international and even when he is deemed ready to return to training, the work to restore the speed and explosiveness that has made him one of the best strikers in the league will only be getting started.
‘The timeline for a recovery perspective isn’t just about healing. It’s about restoring that elastic spring,’ Smith said. ‘You can repair the tendon through surgery but getting back that explosiveness, speed and power, that takes the extra months. When you talk about playing in the Premier League with the levels that are expected, you are dealing with the top echelon of physical beings in that sport. So the level of reconditioning is massive.’
As is often the case, there will be fears among supporters whether Ekitike will be the player he was when he does return.
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The sorry case of Presnel Kimpembe demonstrates perhaps the worst case scenario – the Frenchman was one of Europe’s best centre-halves when he reputed his Achilles in February 2023. He was out for the better part of two years. He returned to action for PSG in February 2025 and now plays for Qatar SC in the Qatar Stars League.
Every recovery process with be different however, with Ekitike in the best place for his journey back. ‘He will be blessed with an incredible group of staff at Liverpool who have all the tools, capabilities and education to be able to bring him through it,’ Smith said.
‘He will absolutely have the right treatment to make a full recovery. But there is a lot of work and effort to get back to the level he was at.’
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Article source: https://metro.co.uk/2026/04/18/hugo-ekitike-suffered-one-worst-injuries-sport-come-back-28023461/