It is a familiar story. A player who proves invincible in the Bundesliga arrives in the Premier League and looks distinctively average. Sancho was touted as the next English wonderkid at Dortmund. Werner was a goal machine at RB Leipzig. Gittens barely gets a run out. And then there is Wirtz, arriving for a record breaking fee — but the broken record just keeps repeating the same old disappointment. But there is a beautiful rhythm to his game, a flow with the ball at his feet that is rare. He can do things others simply cannot. And I am on record: I think he is going to be a big hit.
I will accept that the evidence in support of this claim has been limited. But sometimes you only need a handful of actions to understand the ceiling of a player. Context matters too. Wirtz joined a team still navigating the long shadow of Klopp, transitioning from an era of European and domestic glory into something new and uncertain. We saw Salah, Liverpool’s sharpest shooter, turn to a blunt butter knife. We saw Slot get chased out of Anfield by the ghost of Klopp as the Kop were unconvinced despite his early success. Replacing legends is never easy. But Liverpool fans have an enviable patience, and the right man has now arrived to unlock what this squad can become.
That man is Iraola. His record at Bournemouth is littered with players who improved significantly under his watch. Huijsen, Solanke, Senesi, Kroupi and Alex Scott all either fulfilled their potential or announced themselves to the world under his guidance. I do not think Liverpool had a great summer transfer window, with the squad looking thin and forced to lean on a young and unproven talent pool. But that might be just the situation that lights the Wirtz fuse, as he explodes into the leading playmaker role.
There is often one player who dictates how a team truly plays. Watch Arsenal with and without Ødegaard and you will see a stark difference. Wirtz can be that man for Liverpool. He has the movement, intensity and intelligence to dictate attacking patterns, to find the spaces between the lines before others have even seen them. He needs to earn it, and quite often the secret ingredient is confidence. Once his teammates start to look for him first and trust his brain to unlock defences, you will begin to see a very different and very dangerous Liverpool.
The usual pitfall of the game’s great talents is work rate. They rely on supreme ability where their harder working colleagues rely on application, and it is often the more professional, albeit less naturally gifted, who reach the higher peaks. But Wirtz does not appear to suffer from this arrogance. He regularly leads Liverpool’s running statistics, sprints with and without the ball. So we return to those fleeting moments of magic that flash his brilliance — and they need to be in every game, not once a month.
It is that perfectly weighted pass through a gap that wasn’t there, the elegant drop of the shoulder that glides past a defender and that natural instinct to drift into little pockets of space. These are the moments that keep me believing. But as he stands centre stage amongst a new band of players, with the crowd ready to sing along to the rhythm of his feet — the question remains: is Wirtz the lead singer or the stage hand?
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Nicholas Bull is a British real estate entrepreneur who has called Dubai home for 12 years. A lifelong sports fanatic, he talks all things sport and property.
