In collaboration with Goal, Voetbalzone regularly highlights young players who can go far in the future or who are already earning their spurs in (inter)national top football. This time the attention is focused on the nineteen-year-old Hugo Ekikike, who already managed to find the net eight times in the first half of the season on behalf of Stade Reims in Ligue 1.
You might be wondering who is the top scoring teen in Europe’s top five leagues this season. The answer? French youth international Ekikike van Reims. The 19-year-old may not yet be a household name outside his native France, but the form he has shown in the first half of the Ligue 1 season suggests he will soon be. Ekikike started his career when he was about ten years old, playing for the local amateur club Cormontreuil in the outskirts of Reims. One summer, he was invited to go on holiday with the family of his football coach Jean-Philippe to their mobile home in the Allier region.
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“When we arrived, we opened the cupboards and found a Stade de Reims track jacket,” Jean-Philippe recalled in conversation with Goal. “The children have adapted it; it was too big for my son but it fit Hugo perfectly so he kept it. Shortly after the holidays, he was admitted to the youth academy of Reims.” Jean-Philippe, who coached Ekikike as a player from the Under 7 to the Under 12, has long told his young pupil that Reims would sign him. However, Ekikike was extremely humble, refusing to listen and focusing only on his own development.
“At the amateur club Cormontreuil he has scored many goals without ever getting it high,” explains Jean-Philippe. “For example, he never knew how many goals he had scored in a tournament. He was a winner and never bragged. He always listened, wanted to improve himself, but not to be the best. If he could provide an assist in games despite getting into scoring position himself, he wouldn’t hesitate, because he knew it was the wisest choice.”
About Reims’ eventual interest, Jean-Philippe says: “They must have been tired of Hugo scoring every time their teams played against us.” Eight years ago, Ekikike was included in the Reims youth academy and since this season he has played an important role in the vanguard of les rouges et blancs. He has scored eight times in seventeen league games, seven of these goals in his last ten games. In addition, Ekikike also provided three assists. This season he is without a doubt one of the stars in the French Ligue 1. A little over a year ago, he took the courageous decision to let himself be loaned out to the Danish Velje BK, in search of playing minutes in a first team.
Ekikike made his debut with Reims in October 2020, but after only one game in the first half of the season, he accepted the offer to temporarily move to Vejle, where he would have the chance to measure himself against experienced defenders who have played European football. A big difference with the defenders he encountered at the fourth level of France in the U23 team of Reims. The period in Scandinavia turned out to be a success for Ekikike. In eleven games, he was good for three goals and two assists.
However, his loan to Velje almost did not go through when he, a representative of Reims and his agent were refused at Copenhagen airport in January 2021. At the time, Denmark was in lockdown and there was an entry ban for travelers from abroad. Ekikike was only allowed to enter Denmark after a high-ranking Danish army officer, who happened to be Vejle and warmhearted, interfered. The teenager was given the green light, on the condition that his agent leaves after 48 hours, leaving Ekikike alone in a new country.
However, he was not to be shaken. “When he realized he had to stay alone in Denmark, he looked at his agent and said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be fine,’” a source close to Ekikike told Goal. “He was 18 years old and kept calm even though he arrived in a country with restrictive health measures and had to deal with the cold and the language barrier.” Ekikike is described by those close to him as a level-headed, but determined boy. “You won’t see him going to Dubai at Christmas,” one of Ekikike’s close friends told Goal. “He will stay with his family, spend time with his grandparents and take time for himself to think and rest.”
When it comes to football, Ekikike makes no secret of his ambition: he wants to follow in the footsteps of Kylian Mbappé. “That’s what it means to be a top-level player and that’s what I aspire to myself,” he told Foot Mercato, when the star player of Paris Saint-Germain came up. “Over the past few years, he has been the player I watch the most, who inspires me, and not necessarily just on the pitch.” By comparison, Mbappe scored 15 goals in his first full season in Ligue 1 with AS Monaco in 2016/17. It must be said that he was a year younger than Ekikike is now. Nevertheless, there are some similarities in their play, especially when it comes to Ekikike’s drive to cut in from the left and curl the ball into the long corner with his favorite right leg.
The France Under-20 international is tall (1.89 metres), slender and has a smooth running style. While he’s not particularly fast, he makes up for it with smart runs, especially inside the penalty area. “He has the body of a 19-year-old, but the mentality of Kobe Bryant,” says one of Ekikike’s friends. “If you tell him he only has ten minutes left in a game, he won’t hide, but rather see it as a challenge.”
In addition to analyzing top players, Ekikike also assesses his own performance. For example, in August last year against PSG (0-2 loss) he was very disappointed with his performance when he came on as a substitute, so much so that he immediately started analyzing his own game at home that evening. Ekikike is looking to set things straight with Reims on January 23, when he takes on the Ligue 1 frontrunners again. He has become one of Europe’s most promising teenage strikers. Presnel Kimpembe, Marquinhos and Mbappé, among others, have been warned. If they don’t know who Hugo Ekikike is yet, they probably will soon.