PSG accepted ridiculous must-buy conditions when they signed Hugo Ekitike on loan
Hugo #Hugo
PSG denied the reports published on Goal related to the club from the French capital being interested in loaning Hugo Ekitike out for a season. There is no intention of loaning the young striker outside of PSG next year.
While making brief cameos off the bench more often than not, and not really factoring positiviely in the results of Paris Saint-Germain this season, there is no interest in loaning Ekitike out to a lesser team next campaign.
First and foremost, PSG don’t have many (if any) viable alternatives to play in the most advanced position in the forward line. There are no other professional players with first-team experience in Paris this season so Ekitike was never going to be loaned out through the January transfer window.
Barring unknown arrivals of strikers and forward next summer, Ekitike looks poised to say in Paris ahead of next season.
Ekitike had a prolific month of January, though, scoring three goals while assisting another one. The young striker is playing at PSG on loan from Stade de Reims this season. That comes with a little quirk, though, as revealed by Goal on the note they published on Monday.
PSG acquired Ekitike on a “free” loan last summer but the deal, reportedly, includes a must-buy option quoted at €28.5m + €6.5m in bonuses to be accomplished through his tenure at Paris Saint-Germain.
The conditions to trigger that buy clause were uncovered by Goal yesterday: PSG will be forced to pay that sum if they finish in the top two in Ligue 1 this season. That was, simply put, a mere delay of the inevitable payment considering PSG’s dominance of the domestic competition these days.
Ekitike has played far from the level one would expect at a club such as PSG, though. He has only scored 4 goals in 23 appearances with the team since joining it last summer.
According to Le Parisien and echoed here a few days ago, there are “growing tensions” between multiple players in the Paris Saint-Germain locker room and Ekitike, considered a “pretentious” man and one with “a big head.”
The situation around the team might have led Christophe Galtier and sporting advisor Luis Campos to think about loaning the player for a year, but when Goal asked PSG about that possibility the French club denied such an interest exists.
It would take a massive collapse for PSG to miss on a top-two finish this season, though, so Ekitike will be a full-time Parisian by next July as Paris Saint-Germain’s finish in the domestic league will force them into buy the striker whether they like it or not.
Whether Ekitike ultimately ends up breaking out in Paris or elsewhere, though, is still unknown.