Cracker game in the Champions League
The goalscorer returns
October 22, 2025 – 1:16 p.mReading time: 3 minutes
Eintracht Frankfurt is looking forward to a football festival against Liverpool FC. Florian Wirtz and Hugo Ekitiké return to Germany in the Reds jersey.
The stumbling magic foot Florian Wirtz travels to Germany with Liverpool for the first time, Hugo Ekitiké returns to the Main with a small goal crisis – and even icon Mohamed Salah is criticized: The Reds’ star ensemble is coming to Frankfurt at a good time from Eintracht’s point of view. With a negative series of four defeats, the English record champions got on the plane, the also unstable SGE sensed their chance for the premier class hit – and swapped the goalkeeper for it. Michael Zetterer will replace the recently unstable Kauã Santos.
“Liverpool, Champions League. There’s nothing better in football,” enthused new international Nathaniel Brown. It will be “a great game” on Wednesday (9 p.m. in the live ticker on t-online), Jonathan Burkardt, who was recently in good form, said on DAZN: “These are the games that we are all really looking forward to. Then we’ll give it all away and see how it goes.”
The Hessians have been looking forward to the cracking duel ever since the draw was made, and the fans will certainly provide goosebumps again. But Wirtz and Ekitiké hope for the role of party crashers. After their substitute appearances in the 1:2 against Manchester United, the former Bundesliga duo should move into the starting line-up.
They haven’t fully arrived in Liverpool yet. Wirtz is still waiting for his first scorer point after eleven appearances, Ekitiké lost his rhythm after a good start and has been goalless for almost a month.
This is also why the Reds lost four games in a row for the first time since 2014, and a possible fifth defeat in Frankfurt would be a historic low from September 1953. “If you lose four times in a row, you have to be worried. We know how football works. That does something to the team,” said team manager Arne Slot. It’s not just the royal transfers that are criticized by the less than squeamish English press.
Alexander Isak (145 million euros), Wirtz (125 million) and Ekitiké (95 million) were at the top of the squad’s summer makeover, which cost around 483 million euros. But even club “monuments” are now counted. “I think we have now reached a point where Salah should no longer be a regular player every week,” said Reds legend Jamie Carragher, for example. Rather, Slot should rely on the royal transfers around Wirtz and Ekitiké.