Arne Slot fears Hugo Ekitike has suffered a “really bad” injury to compound Liverpool’s Champions League exit to Paris Saint-Germain.
Ekitike departed on a stretcher on the half-hour mark of the Reds’ 2-0 quarter-final second leg defeat at Anfield on Tuesday that ensured a 4-0 aggregate reverse.
The France international had initially appeared to have slipped on the surface before replays indicated a suspected Achilles injury that left him in agony on the turf.
The striker will now undergo scans to ascertain the extent of the damage with Slot offering a gloomy initial prognosis with Ekitike likely ruled out for the season and a major doubt for the World Cup.
“Hugo, we all saw from the video and the clips that it doesn’t look good,” said the Reds boss.
“Hugo looks really bad but it’s difficult for me to say how bad. Tomorrow we will investigate further how bad it is for him. Let’s see. It doesn’t look good, that is clear.
“I haven’t spoken to him yet. I didn’t see him at half-time and after the game he was already home.
“Eighty-eight minutes until tonight we could play Florian (Wirtz), Alex (Isak) and Hugo and we added 27 or 28 to that and I’d be surprised if we could add any more to that this season.”
On an evening when Ousmane Demebele’s late double provided decisive after Liverpool wasted a host of second-half chances, Slot was forced into another substitution in the second half when Joe Gomez, who had replaced Jeremie Frimpong at the break, was brought off after 67 minutes.
And Slot explained: “Joe Gomez wasn’t injured. I wanted to make another substitution and he said to me: ‘I’m not convinced I can keep sprinting, I feel a little bit’, so it’s better to go off and not take the risk.
“That would have been my fourth substitution, so to keep someone on who might get injured is never a smart thing. I had to change the substitution.”
There was one fitness bonus for Liverpool with Alexander Isak making his first start since December when coming through the opening 45 minutes.
“The good thing is Alex is back,” said Slot. “I said before the game that if you go to extra time and he plays the second half and plays 45 minutes, there are only two minutes in between before extra time comes up for half-an-hour. I don’t think that was realistic.
“To play him for 45 minutes and see at half-time how he feels to add 5-10 minutes to that, that was a possibility today. But because we already had to make the first substitution in the first half, I didn’t want to make the second substitution five minutes after half-time. That’s why I took him off at half-time.
“He was twice close to a goal and that’s why you play a striker of his level. There was one header from a set-piece and one great run in behind Pacho where he was really close to scoring which was eventually offside.
“It’s good to have him back. He was ready and if I thought he wasn’t ready then I wouldn’t have played him.
“If you compare us today to last week, I think it’s fair to say he was completely ready to play otherwise you can’t play a first half as we did, although the second half was even better.”
