“Strikers are always more shiny,” says Eintracht Frankfurt sporting director Timmo Hardung with a smile.
Hardung knows the near £300m profit the Bundesliga club have made from selling forwards over the past six years is what grabs headlines and attention.
“It’s the toughest part of our sport to score a goal, so obviously they draw a lot of attention,” he says. “But I think we managed to improve and develop a lot of players.”
Hardung is right, of course, that it’s not just strikers who have blossomed in the Frankfurt ranks.
Ecuador international Willian Pacho is a prime example – signed from Royal Antwerp for just under £12m in July 2023, the defender left a year later to join Paris St-Germain for almost £35m.
But it is often the forwards who are talked about, and for good reason.
Since Luka Jovic joined Real Madrid and Sebastien Haller moved to West Ham in summer 2019, Frankfurt have seen Andre Silva (RB Leipzig), Randal Kolo Muani (PSG), Omar Marmoush (Manchester City) and Hugo Ekitike (Liverpool) all pass through the club for big profits.
“I wouldn’t say we do anything more specific with them than with any other position,” adds Hardung. “But we try to play offensive football, to create a lot of chances, and I think we’re a good club to just have the opportunity as a striker to score your goals.
“We try to press high, attack the goal as much as possible and that certainly gives our strikers the opportunity to shine.”
That was the case for 23-year-old Ekitike, who will return to Deutsche Bank Park with Liverpool in the Champions League on Wednesday.
Ekitike initially arrived on loan for the second half of the 2023-24 season after struggling for minutes at PSG, who he had joined 18 months earlier from Reims.
His move to Frankfurt was soon made permanent and the French forward racked up 15 goals and eight assists in the Bundesliga last term, the fourth-most goal involvements among players aged 23 or under in Europe’s top five leagues.
“We just saw his potential,” says Hardung. “We saw his strengths and we felt like this could fit very well to the style of football we want to play.
“He was a young football player that had a tough time, didn’t get as much playing time as he wanted, which is not too surprising at PSG being a big club, but we saw the opportunity there and made the deal work.
“[We] told Ekitike what kind of pathway we would have for him, what kind of ideas we would have, where we would like him to improve, but also where we would see his strengths really giving us an opportunity of winning football matches more.”
