Ekitke turned home the equaliser to cancel out Anthony Gordon’s opener – after some brilliant work from Florian Wirtz. His second goal was all of his own making as he drove forward from Milos Kerkez’s through ball, holding off Malick Thiaw before poking past Nick Pope.
The Liverpool forward took to social media following the Reds’ important win, that took them one point behind fourth-place Chelsea, as his teammates rushed online to support the emerging Anfield hero.
But something else stood out as Mbappe also hailed his international teammate.
Ekitike posted a carousel of pictures from his outing at Anfield against the Magpies in a caption-less post. But the Real Madrid striker was among the comments, describing Ekitike as a “superstar” in there.
Liverpool’s No.22 could have had his hat-trick in the second half after pouncing on a Dan Burn mistake but, after going one-on-one with Pope, he miscued his effort wasting the opportunity to take the matchball home.
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Speaking to TNT Sports, Ekitike said: “To be honest, it is something that I work on in training, I don’t usually use it that much in games because it is something we don’t see much.
“I tried to go past him, but he is pretty fast, so I had to find something.
“The point is that in the last games, since the start of the season, I have had to cut inside and shoot, but he gave me so much space that I could try this and it worked. It’s good.”
Newcastle saw exactly what they missed out on during their own summer pursuit in trying to land the Eintracht Frankfurt forward. However, it was Liverpool that gazumped them to his signature.
Eddie Howe was forced to rue the decision as he talked up the 23-year-old’s quality.
He said: “He’s an outstanding player and I think you saw that today. He’s got a little bit of everything – and I think that’s his biggest strength. He’s tall, he is quick and he can finish.”You’ve got to give Ekitike a lot of credit for the second one but, still a tough angle to score from.
“That’s what happens here when you get the crowd up and, before we knew it, we were chasing the game.”It would be a long conversation if I was to go through all goals. We obviously didn’t organise ourselves in the correct way and we got punished.”We got punished from a great goal from Ekitke’s perspective and – sometimes – you have to acknowledge the quality of the player against you. Although acknowledging again that we could have defended it better.”
