Premier League high-flyers Newcastle United appear to have got the last laugh with reports in France indicating that Hugo Ekitike has been put up for sale by Paris Saint-Germain.
With the benefit of hindsight, perhaps a striker with only one consistent season of first-team football under his belt was not, in fact, better off at a club already boasting three of the most iconic, well-paid attackers in the entire footballing world.
Ektike rebuffed Newcastle’s advances in order to join PSG last summer.
Nine months on, his tally of Ligue 1 starts stands at a measly eight. Ten, across all competitions. And with Christophe Galtier’s stuttering side expected to cash in on a number of fringe players this summer, Le Parisien believes that Ekitike is likely to find himself back on the market.
Hugo Ekitike chose PSG over Newcastle United
PSG, the report adds, will trigger the £30 million obligation-to-buy clause in the 20-year-old’s contract before selling him on. It remains to be seen if Les Parisiens can make any sort of a profit on a player who’s development plateaued while spending so much of the campaign nailed to football’s most jewel-encrusted substitute’s bench.
“When you have the attacking trio that we have at PSG, when you play in place of one of the three, there is a comparison,” Galtier explained, via L’Equipe.
“He was rightly disappointed a few times not to start certain matches. He was disappointed. I gave him the reasons for my choices. Obviously, he is a talented player, who must compensate for his lack of playing time in training.
“We also asked that he works more, that he puts in more intensity. So that he can be more striking when he plays.”
‘You cannot refuse PSG’
Now, it is not beyond the realms of possibility that Newcastle could come calling again. Callum Wilson, that well-placed header against Manchester United aside, is 31 now. He has struggled for form under Eddie Howe of late. There may, then, still be room for another attacker.
Ekitike, meanwhile, still ticks a lot of boxes for a side prioritising hungry, athletic talent with potential by the bucketload. The former Reims starlet, replaced at his former club by the outstanding Arsenal loanee Folarin Balogun, spoke warmly about Newcastle too.
It’s just that PSG, he said, was an opportunity too good to miss.
“I’m not setting aside everything Newcastle did for me,” Ekitike tells Le10 Sport . “If I had to go abroad, I would have gone there. But when PSG wants you and you’re French, you can’t refuse.”
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