‘A lot of shunning…’ – How Florian Wirtz’s impending move to Liverpool has gone down in Germany
It seems as though we’ve been saying it for weeks, but it really does now feel like we’re just days away from Florian Wirtz officially becoming a Liverpool FC player.
The Reds reached an agreement with Bayer Leverkusen last Friday for what could be a British record transfer fee (£116.5m after add-ons), and David Ornstein has reported today (via The Athletic) that the 22-year-old is expected to have his medical on Merseyside this coming Friday.
The signing would represent a serious statement of intent from the Premier League champions and is also set to be one of the standout deals of the summer anywhere in the world, not least in his native country.
The reaction from Germany to Wirtz joining Liverpool
Speaking on talkSPORT‘s Trans Europe Express show, German football expert Raphael Honigstein said that Wirtz will be a massive loss to the country’s top flight and indicated that Bayern Munich will be feeling especially sickened over their unsuccessful pursuit of the player.
He claimed: “For the Bundesliga, of course, it’s a shame to not see him for a little bit longer. I think he’s going to be the next superstar like [Kevin] De Bruyne, like [Erling] Haaland, that people would have liked to see a bit longer.
“Bayern feel, of course, that they have missed out. They’ve been very, very vocal, as they often are, about trying to get him in. When they do that, of course they are exposed, and they’ve been the target of a lot of shunning for that, as you can expect, in Germany because they missed out on him.”
However, Honigstein added that there isn’t any great bitterness from within Germany about Wirtz leaving his homeland for Liverpool, who are expected to become even more popular in the country.
He said: “At the same time, I think German football will be happy. It’s not the Bundesliga, but it is Florian Wirtz playing – just like [Jurgen] Klopp was coaching – at such a massive club in the Premier League.
“I think the attention will be huge for him, and more people than ever before will watch Liverpool with him, trying to figure out where his journey is heading, what his role will be. Liverpool already had a pretty big following before Klopp and it’s only grown during his time there.”
Wirtz joining Liverpool marks a rare transfer miss for Bayern Munich
By snubbing Bayern for a move to Anfield, Wirtz has taken a different path to many high-profile German footballers before him.
The Munich giants managed to entice the likes of Michael Ballack, Philipp Lahm, Manuel Neuer, Mats Hummels and Mario Gotze from fellow Bundesliga clubs in the past, but they had no such joy in their pursuit of the 22-year-old playmaker.
It’s a transaction which instead shows the pulling power of the Premier League and indeed Liverpool, who’ve cast off the shackles of the past few transfer windows to go big on one of European football’s most coveted talents and send out a massive statement to their domestic and continental rivals.
Spending £100m+ on Wirtz will obviously carry an element of risk from FSG, but history suggests that they don’t impetuously dive into recruitment, especially for big-money deals, and they won’t have bid a nine-figure amount for the Leverkusen star if they didn’t believe he’d be a genuine game-changer at Anfield.
Didi Hamann – who knows all about playing for the Reds and in the Bundesliga – is convinced that, in addition to his much-feted talents on the ball, the 22-year-old also has the physicality to adapt successfully to the rigours of the Premier League.
It’s understandable that German football fans will miss him from their top flight, but given Bayern’s dominance of the division in recent years, rival clubs might also be breathing a heavy sigh of relief that it’s Liverpool and not the Bavarian giants who’ve won the race for his signature!
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