Refining Hugo Ekitike's Take-on Tactic Will Deliver Goals

Dribbles and carries aren't quite the same thing in data terms. Regardless, Hugo Ekitike didn't have many peers for either last season.

Hugo Ekitike finished fourth in the 2024/25 Bundesliga for carries into the opposition penalty area, with 52. He was one behind a Leverkusen attacking midfielder called Florian Wirtz.

Looking beyond Germany, Luis Díaz recorded 56 such carries for Liverpool. With 126, Mohamed Salah led Europe’s big five leagues. This is an important metric for Arne Slot’s Reds, past, present and future.

Ekitike provided evidence of his skills in the Community Shield, dribbling into space before unleashing a perfectly placed shot to open the scoring. Nobody has done so much in post-shot expected goal terms with such a low value chance to score for Liverpool since Alexis Mac Allister’s belter against Fulham in December 2023.

A better example of the Frenchman’s dribbling prowess occurred in the friendly victory over Athletic Club. Running onto the pass from Dominik Szoboszlai pictured below, the number 22 carried the ball to just shy of the byline. He then pulled it back centrally to assist Salah for the opener.

Carrying the ball well when space is available can be more productive than completing a dribble (in statistical terms) by going past an opponent with the ball. As was noted in an Opta Analyst article on Ekitike, “only three players across Europe’s top five leagues had more shots following ball carries in 2024-25 than he did.”

Liverpool’s new number 22 also created 17 chances following a ball carry of at least five metres last season. His combined rate for these shots and key passes topped what anyone in the Premier League with the same level of pitch time mustered.

Ekitike is truly elite at delivering output after carrying the ball, though Kopites have yet to see how well he can glide past an opponent in possession. He did not complete a dribble (also known as a ‘take-on’) against Athletic Club or at Wembley.

Fear not, he undoubtedly can, even if his standing is not quite as elite as it is for productive ball carries. Driblab recently highlighted that he led the big five leagues for proportion of dribbles used to create shots, albeit they did not specify if this meant dribbles in the Opta sense or ball carries (in the, um, Opta sense).

No matter. Shot creating action (SCA) statistics on FBRef can help us fill in the gaps a little. Once we’ve studied those, we can look at a few clips of Ekitike in full flight.

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SCAs are the two actions directly preceding a shot. They can be passes, most obviously, or other shots, fouls won or defensive actions. Oh, and take-ons, our point of interest here. The data highlights what many suspect about Jérémy Doku in that he can dribble past opposition players with ease yet produce little of note once he has done so.

A simple comparison with Ekitike rams this point home. Doku completed over twice as many dribbles in league football as the Liverpool new boy, trouncing him in the standings by 107 to 52. Yet the Manchester City winger trailed Ekitike by one (14-13) for shot creating actions from take-ons.

Doku’s conversion rate for turning take-ons into SCAs (12.1 per cent) is below average for all players (16.2), never mind forwards/midfielders (21.4) who outperform their colleagues deeper on the field.

Ekitike, for the record, was at 26.9 per cent, the 17th highest among the 50 players who completed at least 50 dribbles in one of the big leagues. Wirtz was another such man, as we have studied previously (below), with his hit rate in this field even higher (28.0).

We can get further information on the take-ons which Ekitike used as a shot creating action by digging into the data for the matches in which they took place. The below table will be easier to view in a separate tab, but the key takeaway is this: a selection of high value chances are mixed in with what appear to be poor shooting choices.

The nine shots from further than 11 yards generated 0.65 xG, whereas the seven from forward of the penalty spot yielded 3.29 expected and three actual goals. While the distance difference explains this, Slot’s Liverpool were more judicious with their shot choices than they were under the Dutchman’s predecessor.

Firing off a wasteful shot when there is the possibility of creating a better chance will not be tolerated for long at Anfield. More of the latter with fewer of the former, please, Hugo.

Here are clips of some of the above mentioned shots, with the videos set to only show you the move in question. We begin with Ekitike’s goal against Hoffenheim, which shows the benefit in dribbling around the goalkeeper. What was already a very decent chance when he entered the penalty box with the ball became a 96 per cent likelihood of a goal once he’d taken the shot stopper out of the equation.

Not that there are any guarantees. Ekitike was known for squandering decent chances last season, with one occurring after he had dribbled past the St Pauli goalkeeper on his own patch.

His control of the ball was not as clean as in our first clip, but even so, he should have scored. This opportunity was of higher value than any which Liverpool failed to convert in the 2024/25 Premier League.

If you have a UEFA account, you can see a clear video of his take-on before scoring against Ferencváros in the Europa League here. The poor quality of this embeddable video thankfully shows enough of Ekitike’s close control in the centre of the penalty area to suffice.

The next one was a free gift, signed, sealed and delivered by Nordi Mukiele. Ekitike once again managed to dribble past an opposition goalkeeper when foolishly invited to do so. With so many goalies expected to be good on the ball in the Premier League, the 23-year-old could easily be presented with chances of this ilk for Liverpool.

His final take-on powered goal for Frankfurt occurred in the Europa League. The strike against Ajax was reminiscent of his goal at Tottenham last term as well as his Community Shield effort; cutting in from the left before firing the ball into the far corner of the net.

It’s a bit like having Arjen Robben on his opposite flank, he just needs to deliver in this way for the next decade or so. Ekitike is strong for carrying the ball, plus he can also dribble in impossibly tight spaces in the box. A very powerful combination, it should be electric for the Reds if he cuts out the poorly chosen shots.