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Fabián Ruiz and Hugo Ekitiké: PSG's odd couple of 22/23
One name conjures the San Paolo under the lights, a left foot threading passes through Serie A midfields. The other brings to mind the Deutsche Bank Park crowd roaring a young striker who terrorised the Bundesliga. Fabián Ruiz belongs to Napoli in the collective football memory; Hugo Ekitiké belongs to Eintracht Frankfurt. And yet for one season, 2022-23, both men wore Paris Saint-Germain's colours at the same time, collecting a Ligue 1 title as teammates before their careers pulled them in entirely different directions.
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A season that doesn't fit the narrative
If you built a highlight reel of Fabián Ruiz's career, it would start at Real Betis, pivot hard to four years in Naples, and then settle into the Champions League triumphs he's since helped deliver. Hugo Ekitiké's reel would open in Reims, detour through a loan in Denmark, and find its true voice in Frankfurt, where he scored 15 Bundesliga goals in a single season and made the Bundesliga Team of the Season. Neither man is a natural fit in the same sentence as the other, which is exactly why their shared season at PSG is worth pausing on.
How they each arrived in Paris
Ruiz's route to PSG was straightforward by comparison: Napoli sold him in August 2022 after four seasons that included a Coppa Italia win, and he signed a five-year deal, debuting as a substitute in a win over Brest before scoring his first goal against Montpellier in February 2023. He was already an established Spain international, having featured at Euro 2020, and he slotted into PSG's midfield as a title-winning squad player in his first campaign.
Ekitiké's path was messier and, in hindsight, more interesting. Reims had turned down offers for him, including reported interest from Newcastle, before PSG took him on a season-long loan with a mandatory option to buy in July 2022. He made his debut as a substitute in a 5-0 win over Clermont and scored his first goal for the club against Auxerre in November. He finished that 2022-23 season with four goals and four assists in thirty-two appearances, a squad player's numbers, not a star's, but enough to secure a Ligue 1 winner's medal and a permanent transfer the following summer.
Different seasons, same trophy
That's the overlap: two players, one Ligue 1 title, one dressing room, one campaign. Ruiz was the experienced midfielder building on a proven Napoli pedigree. Ekitiké was the young striker still searching for the find-your-feet moment that would eventually arrive, not in Paris, but in Frankfurt. The following season told the contrast more starkly still, Ekitiké was reportedly excluded from PSG's Champions League squad altogether, while Ruiz continued building toward the role he'd play in the club's later Champions League successes.
Two different exits, two different stories
Ekitiké left PSG in instalments: first a loan to Eintracht Frankfurt in February 2024, then a permanent move that April for €16.5 million. It was in Frankfurt that his career found its shape, 15 league goals, a third-place Bundesliga finish, a place in the division's Team of the Season, and eventually an €80 million move to Liverpool. Ruiz, meanwhile, stayed and grew into a central figure at PSG, eventually helping the club to back-to-back Champions League titles and playing a key role for Spain at Euro 2024 and the 2026 World Cup.
Neither man's defining story was written at Parc des Princes. But for one season, before Napoli and Frankfurt became the clubs forever attached to their names, Fabián Ruiz and Hugo Ekitiké were PSG teammates, lifting the same Ligue 1 trophy together.
Did PSG make the right call letting Ekitiké leave while keeping Ruiz?
Sources1 source
Wikipedia (en), Wikipedia (en)
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