Hugo Ekitike lined up alongside Liverpool creators present and past. It was Florian Wirtz who provided him with a goal, Steven Gerrard who supplied the compliments. A post-match interview pitchside was notable for the way Gerrard, a man not given to gushing, reached for perhaps the highest praise he could.
He compared Ekitike to Fernando Torres. His second goal against Newcastle brought particular echoes: the quicksilver acceleration, the almost instinctive finish. “He's scoring similar types of goals, where if you give him space in the channel, he'll run it, he's too quick, you can't catch him and he's deadly,” said Gerrard. “There are a lot of similarities: pace, power.”
