Florian Wirtz faces a make-or-break season, but more is at stake than his Liverpool career as he belatedly seeks to establish himself in the Premier League.
English football needs Wirtz to succeed as much as Andoni Iraola, the new coach at Anfield.
We are in the midst of a superstar drain. If a talented playmaker such as Wirtz fails, the prioritising of physicality over technique which became so apparent last season will continue to the detriment of the overall spectacle. There will be a broader, longer-term impact on the level of overseas signings across the country if flair players are less interested in joining a league where set-piece football and long throws are so influential.
Real Madrid and Barcelona have always been at the top of football’s pyramid. The greatest players see the Bernabéu and Nou Camp as their ultimate destination, which is why anyone who believes Vinicius Junior was seriously considering leaving Spain for Arsenal this summer is deluded.
We have been enjoying a prolonged golden age in England during which world-class footballers have been lured here, primarily thanks to our clubs’ wealth, but also because of the attraction of working with the best coaches – from Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsène Wenger to José Mourinho and more recently Jürgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola.
The quality of Premier League football has been a major selling point. That may no longer be the case.
When Liverpool signed Wirtz a year ago it was a coup because one of the most coveted young talents chose Anfield ahead of Bayern Munich.
Would the next emerging world star do so in the current climate? The German’s arrival actually bucks the general trend, because the recent movements of top-level footballers must concern Premier League recruiters.
Proof of this can be identified by analysing where the attacking talent of the four best nations are playing their club football.
The World Cup semi-finalists were England, France, Argentina and winners Spain. Of the 14 attack-minded players who started the semi-finals in the US, only Morgan Rogers represents a Premier League club. Harry Kane, Jude Bellingham and Anthony Gordon have all moved away from England.
France’s forward line was dominated by Real Madrid’s Kylian Mbappe, supported by Bayern Munich’s Michael Olise and the Paris St-Germain wingers. Spain and Argentina had no Premier League strikers in their line-ups.
Although Wirtz has struggled to make an impact in the English top flight, Bayern excelled with Kane and Olise, ex-Premier League stars who realised they could plunder goals and assists in the Bundesliga at a higher rate without having to slug it out in gruelling fixtures as they did for their former clubs.
Plenty of forwards will watch and learn from Kane and Olise’s success and contrast it with Wirtz’s form.
Would Liverpool’s signing have looked so ineffective had he moved to the Allianz Arena, or would he be praised in Germany as one of Europe’s most watchable talents?
Our status as the go-to destination ahead of Bayern, especially, is under threat, and if an increasing number follow the England captain Kane’s path, it will deprive us of seeing more of the world’s best week in, week out.
How Wirtz fares at the start of this season will indicate whether he will be viewed as the right signing in the wrong era for Liverpool, moving to Merseyside just as the Premier League’s preferred style reverted to set-piece dominance.
The jury is out on whether he possesses the tools to overcome the physical challenge. I must admit, I have my doubts.
When he joined Liverpool, the hope at Anfield was that Wirtz would dominate in the same manner as Kevin De Bruyne did at Manchester City, bending games to his will with his clever passing and vision. But the German does not have the athleticism or running and shooting power of De Bruyne. Too many opposition managers will analyse the Liverpool midfield and believe it can be out-muscled and overrun.
Even at his best, Wirtz has looked ‘neat and tidy’ rather than the killer in and around the penalty box one would have expected given his fee and reputation. He has resembled a useful squad addition for about £40m rather than a game-changer who cost £115m.
Given how little he contributed, Liverpool supporters were patient. His backers often suggest it can take a year for foreign players to settle into English football.
When you assess the most successful, that is a bit of a myth. Robert Pires’s Arsenal career is the example most cited, and obviously De Bruyne and Mohamed Salah were denied opportunities at Chelsea when they first arrived in England. But overall the best imports hit the ground running.
After last season’s terrible title defence, Wirtz needs to do so this season. Iraola cannot afford a slow start where the same flaws and tactical conundrums that haunted Arne Slot, and ultimately led to his sacking, rise to the fore.
When assessing Liverpool’s squad, it staggers me that having spent so much, there are still more problems than obvious solutions for the head coach, many of them identical to this time last season.
After the opening game against Iraola’s Bournemouth a year ago, I expressed my concern that using Wirtz in a three-man midfield left the defence too exposed, every Liverpool match in those early weeks resembled basketball.
Slot eventually conceded Alexis Mac Allister or Dominik Szoboszlai had to play as the most forward high-pressing midfielder to redress the balance, with Wirtz increasingly moving to the left. Liverpool won the Premier League title in 2025 with Szoboszlai in that position, the Hungarian’s athleticism so fundamental to the team’s success it is easy to understand why he was rewarded with a new contract.
During pre-season, Iraola has restored Wirtz as the No 10 and there have been encouraging signs of a relationship with Alexander Isak. The defensive issues, however, remain unresolved.
If Wirtz does not have the desired impact in the early games this season, it is not difficult to foresee history repeating itself and Iraola realising he must compromise attacking romanticism for pragmatism.
Given Iraola sets up his side with out-and-out wingers, such circumstances would raise serious doubts about Wirtz’s future because the most obvious positional switch means he would again play from the left, as he does for his country.
In the meantime, rather than replace right-winger Mohamed Salah, Liverpool have spent the summer contemplating spending another £100m on a left winger, PSG’s Bradley Barcola, despite being well equipped on that side of the pitch.
Rio Ngumoha, whose performances on the left won him an England call-up, will find himself switching flanks.
Given the repercussions across the side and for his club’s hopes of an immediate recovery after a torrid 12 months, Wirtz simply must perform to the standard of a top-class Liverpool player. Last year he was afforded months to show up. This season he will probably be given only a few weeks.
Failure to do so would embarrass the club that invested so much in a footballer they presumed to be a symbol of a golden future, and more than probably continue the trend of highly rated attackers believing Spain and Germany a better fit for their abilities.