{"id":739952,"date":"2026-06-16T10:34:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T10:34:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/739952\/"},"modified":"2026-06-16T10:34:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T10:34:15","slug":"hugo-ekitike-targets-boxing-day-return-with-liverpool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/739952\/","title":{"rendered":"Hugo Ekitike targets Boxing Day return with Liverpool"},"content":{"rendered":"

11<\/p>\n

Hugo Ekitike (23), who ruptured his right Achilles two months ago, is targeting a competitive return with Liverpool in late December 2026, for the Premier League\u2019s Boxing Day fixtures. L\u2019Equipe <\/a>has written a feature on the Frenchman\u2019s rehabilitation process after the serious injury he sustained with the Reds against PSG in the Champions League quarter-finals.<\/p>\n

A couple of days after rupturing his Achilles, Ekitike underwent surgery in London<\/a> after discussion with American specialists, including the surgeon that overseen Jayson Tatum\u2019s operation after the Boston Celtics player\u2019s Achilles rupture. Meanwhile, L\u2019Equipe\u00a0reports that Ekitike\u2019s last two months have been marked by \u201cimmense pain\u201d, prompting the Liverpool centre-forward to ignore most of the messages of support he receives, as if high-level football \u201cceased to exit\u201c.<\/p>\n

The outlet understands that France national team manager Didier Deschamps regularly calls him to offer words of support<\/a>, as do his France and Liverpool teammates. Liverpool medical teams\u2019 progress reports are said to be positive with Ekitike working on his upper-body strengt, so he doesn\u2019t have too much of a lag when he can finally take his boot off and put weight on his foot.<\/p>\n

L\u2019Equipe\u00a0adds that Ekitike could meet up with his France teammates in the coming weeks on America\u2019s Eastern seaboard, where\u00a0Les Bleus\u00a0will play their three World Cup group stage games. The France international intends to return to training in autumn before getting back into competitive action on Boxing Day.<\/p>\n

GFFN | Bastien Cheval<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"11 Hugo Ekitike (23), who ruptured his right Achilles two months ago, is targeting a competitive return with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":739953,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85],"class_list":["post-739952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=739952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/739953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=739952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=739952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=739952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}