Boss Hugo: Ekitike is Flo's New Bro

Liverpool hit attacking heights in midweek that few teams have managed against Real Madrid. The combination of Hugo Ekitike and Florian Wirtz proved influential.

Liverpool’s 1-0 win over Real Madrid is utterly fascinating to analyse. A Reds side that lost six games in a run of seven has now beaten two of the top six clubs in the world (according to the Opta rankings) this season.

They hit two attacking marks against Real that opposing teams rarely manage to combine. Liverpool produced 2.3 non-penalty expected goals while putting nine shots on target, a pairing which has only happened to Madrid six times in their 412 matches in the FBRef database.

A combination of this nature should produce more than a single goal but Thibaut gonna Courtois when up against the Reds. It’s worth considering how Liverpool were able to generate so many expected goals against a side that arrived having won every match bar one in 2025/26.

Having their strongest performance for set piece xG this season - and second best in the Arne Slot era - clearly helped. Nonetheless, they did well to be so effective when having so little of the ball. Only once before this season had the Reds had less than 53 per cent of the possession, when they had 47 at Stamford Bridge, yet they attempted just 40 per cent of the passes here.

Liverpool completed over 100 passes fewer than in any other league or European match this season. The interesting aspect of this is that centre forward Hugo Ekitike received more passes than in any other game for the club in the big two competitions, despite been taken off in the 79th minute.

His tally was inflated thanks mainly to the efforts of one man: Florian Wirtz. Is this budding relationship ready to bloom?