It happened immediately in probably the most innocuous of circumstances. But that one moment has left Hugo Ekitike faces a protracted and painful road back to football.
The Liverpool striker, his club’s top scorer this season having immediately taken to life within 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 got here 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 together with his hopes of featuring for France at this summer’s World Cup. He may even miss a sizeable portion of next season with early estimates suggesting he will probably be sidelined for nine months.
‘It is totally one in every of the worst injuries an athlete can suffer,’ Stephen Smith, CEO and founding father of Kitman Labs which specialises in injury welfare, told Metro. ‘It is incredibly debilitating. The timeline estimates and historical injuries of this nature show they take a big time frame to get better from.’
It is probably the injury footballers fear probably the most and former cases illustrate how long the road back will probably be.
Callum Hudson-Odoi’s electric begin to life at Chelsea was cut short in April 2019, returning to motion after five months. His Blues teammate Ruben Loftus-Cheek then again was out of the sport for nine months. ‘I got here back from injury but didn’t feel myself, didn’t feel powerful, wasn’t running past people and felt like I lost numerous muscle and power,’ he said.
Going back even further, Laurent Koscielny suffered the identical injury in May 2018, sitting out for seven months.
‘I heard a crack and I knew it was gone,’ the previous Arsenal captain said. ‘I used to be screaming on the pitch. I remember hitting my hand on the bottom several times. It was an atrocious pain.’
Smith compares the Achilles tendon to an elastic band to show how vital it’s for every little thing a footballer does.
‘Whether it is a rupture, it’s gone. It’s gone completely. You don’t half rupture it,’ Smith explained. ‘The facility and force that goes through that area is tremendous. It’s the strongest tendon in your entire body.
‘Consider it like an elastic band. When your foot hits the bottom 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’ll be able to’t generate any push off force to run, jump or speed up. It stops the player’s ability to perform probably the most fundamental facets and movements of the game. There is no such thing as a running, no sprinting, no jumping, no changing of direction.’
As of Friday, Ekitike was still to undergo surgery but is predicted to achieve this imminently. After that, the healing process begins. There will probably be months of waiting for the France international and even when he’s deemed able to return to training, the work to revive the speed and explosiveness that has made him among the best strikers within the league will only be getting began.
‘The timeline for a recovery perspective isn’t nearly healing. It’s about restoring that elastic spring,’ Smith said. ‘You’ll be able to repair the tendon through surgery but getting back that explosiveness, speed and power, that takes the additional months. Whenever you speak about playing within the Premier League with the degrees which can be expected, you might be coping with the highest echelon of physical beings in that sport. So the extent of reconditioning is huge.’
As is usually the case, there will probably be fears amongst supporters whether Ekitike will probably be the player he was when he does return.
The sorry case of Presnel Kimpembe demonstrates perhaps the worst case scenario – the Frenchman was one in every of Europe’s best centre-halves when he reputed his Achilles in February 2023. He was out for the higher a part of two years. He returned to motion for PSG in February 2025 and now plays for Qatar SC within the Qatar Stars League.
Every recovery process with be different nonetheless, with Ekitike in one of the best place for his journey back. ‘He will probably be blessed with an incredible group of staff at Liverpool who’ve all of the tools, capabilities and education to have the ability to bring him through it,’ Smith said.
‘He’ll absolutely have the correct treatment to make a full recovery. But there may be numerous work and energy to get back to the extent he was at.’
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