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“The strikers are always brighter,” said Eintracht Frankfurt Sporting Director Timmo Hardung with a smile.
Hardung knows the nearly £300m profit the Bundesliga club has made from selling forwards over the past six years has been gripping and attention-grabbing.
“It’s the hardest part of our sport to score a goal, obviously they get a lot of attention,” he said. “But I think we were able to improve and develop a lot of players.”
Of course, Hardung was right, that it wasn’t just strikers who blossomed in Frankfurt’s ranks.
Ecuador International Pochian is a prime example – signed from Royal Antwerp for just under £12m in July 2023, the defender joined Paris St-Germin for around £35m in one year.
But it is always the paths that are discussed, and for good reason.
Since Luka Jovic joined Real Madrid and Sebastien Haller moved to West Ham in the summer of 2019, Frankfurt saw the Club for big profits for big profits.
“I wouldn’t say we’re going to do anything more specific to them than any other position,” Hardung added. “But we try to play offensive football, to create more chances, and I think we are a good club with a chance like a welgration to score your goals.
“We try to press high, attack the goal as much as possible and that really gives our strikers the opportunity to shine.”
That is the case for 23-year-old Ekitike, who will return to Deutsche Bank Park with Liverpool in the Champions League on Wednesday.
Initially on loan for the second half of the 2023-24 season after struggling for minutes at PSG, he joined 18 months ago from Reims.
His move to Frankfurt soon became permanent and the French forward racked up 15 goals and eight assists among players aged 23 or under in the league’s top five.
“We just saw his potential,” Hardung said. “We have seen his strength and we feel that he can do very well with the style of football we want to play.
“He’s a young footballer who had a difficult time, didn’t get as much playing time as he wanted, which is not surprising at PSG, but we saw the opportunity there and we did the job.
“(We) were told what kind of path we want for him, what kind of our ideas, where we want him to develop so that we have a chance to win football more.”
