It's still a team sport. The Leverkusen team was a well rounded machine far ahead of de Bruyne's Wolfsburg team. Take de Bruyne and Wirtz out of both teams and Leverkusen is still the far better team.
Florian Wirtz | Liverpool Player
- Thread starter Invictus
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There is certainly doubt that is performances will translate into the PL. Especially as his success at Bayer was as part of a team that was truly captured lightning in a bottle.
Gonna keep my powder dry until after we play them, lads.
Yep I took a look at that Wolfsburg team:
It's incredibly lopsided and unbalanced
A midfield of Luiz Gustavo (Good player), De Bruyne (Excellent), Perisic (at the time hadn't developed), Vierinha (who?) and Maximilian Arnold (decent)
In defense, some okay players like Naldo, some guys I've never heard of.
But then upfront, a strike Partnership of Andre Schurrle, Bas Dost (
) and Bendtner (), Bas Dost scored 16 goals, Schurrle scored 1 and Bendtner grabbed a few. Meanwhile that Leverkusen team had Wirtz, Frimpong, Grimaldo, Boniface, Tah, Xhaka, Andrich, Hincapie, Hoffmann.
Like overall, that Leverkusen team is a level above so De Bruyne's success or lack thereof compared to Wirtz is not a fair comparison.
Fair observation. I also didn't watch all his games but saw the final against Atalanta and boy, was he bullied around. Back then they said he would need to get used to this sort of intensity and apparently he still hasn't.
Then there was the round of 16 a year later in the Champions League against Bayern, and while he missed the return leg, he played about 80 minutes in the first game and after the 3:0, the tie was basically decided. Bayern in the Champions League is another type of intensity compared to the league and again he didn't know how to deal with it at all.
He hasn't faced any other real elite teams in the Bundesliga other than Bayern against which he was helpless in the Champions League.
Yes. Götze at Dortmund was a joy to watch and brillant in tight spaces, but he never was as important and influential as Wirtz for Leverkusen. It was also obvious that he needs a fully functioning team around him to shine, a but like Sancho.
The only young talent in the Bundesliga that ever impressed me more than Wirtz was Dembele at Dortmund.
Wasn't it more the fact that Mario Goetze had very noticeable attitude and effort problems - such as coming into the season overweight and completely unfit?
Or is that my imagination.
No way, that's a huge embelishment.
There are a few players who played in Bundesliga over the years who were literally in the conversation for the best player in their position.
Wirtz was never (outside of some people here who we shall not name) considered the best attacking midfielder in the world, and Dembele was never considered the best wide attacker in the world (when he was at Dortmund).
Surely Ribery, Ozil, Lewa, Musiala, Haaland were better in Bundesliga than Wirtz.
I mean christ in his two seasons and a half at Dortmund Haaland almost had a 1:1 ratio.
Epic waste of money
Yeah right. Like Sancho’s quality was beyond doubt.
On a Michelle Mone level of a waste of money
He apparently had a metabolic disease.
I said "young talent", i wouldnt include Ribery in that. And also the first 1 or 2 years of Lewandowski at Dortmund were nothing special.
Haaland yes, also very impressive. I think it comes down to personal preferences and what type of players you like.
Musiala is imo the more exciting and flashy player, but he is also so far not as consistent and influential as Wirtz was for Leverkusen.
I'm not sure if it's because how his career panned out but Gotze was getting some crazy hype on another forum by German posters. Was being called the greatest German talent that they've ever seen prior to his move to Bayern.
I think part of the issue here is people have talked up how good he is so much they'd rather invent reasons why him not being very good has nothing to do with him not being very good, instead of just admit he isn't very good.
I will keep my view on his start of the season to my self until we play them.
One of them. Another is you always get the group of folks that go straight to "can't cut it in this league at all" type of comments when a player from another big league struggles in a new competition/club, instead of just accepting moving in a team sport is hard and no sure thing even for top hyped players. Things like that always end up in stupid debates, granted a fair amount of it is probably just trolling liverpool fans, considering it's a united forum.
How many attacking players who flop when they join the PL have actually turned it around though and became world class after starting off very very poorly.
Like, the only one who I can think of is Gareth Bale, and that's mainly because he was like 18 when he joined and second of all, he transitioned from being a full back to a winger.
Maybe Son, but I can't remember Son being this bad when he joined.
If I have learned anything watching football for the past four decades, it is never worth paying far above average amount of transfer money for ANYBODY, which currently is around £100M+ and I would argue even £90m+
The thing is at that amount, you are paying for "guaranteed AND Immediate success" but there are never any guarantees for anybody in football, not for Neymar to PSG, not even Messi to PSG, let alone Wirtz to Liverpool. And if the success does not come, even does not come immediately, the enormous price tag becomes sensationally more problematic than if close-to-average transfer flops.
Bottomline, it is simply a very bad idea.
Just get good players at reasonable market rates or slightly above and invest in building the team. Galacticos is idiotic approach. young "galacticos" from lesser leagues - pure gamble
Whoever payed £116 million for Wirtz should be fired
The thing is at that amount, you are paying for "guaranteed AND Immediate success" but there are never any guarantees for anybody in football, not for Neymar to PSG, not even Messi to PSG, let alone Wirtz to Liverpool. And if the success does not come, even does not come immediately, the enormous price tag becomes sensationally more problematic than if close-to-average transfer flops.
Bottomline, it is simply a very bad idea.
Just get good players at reasonable market rates or slightly above and invest in building the team. Galacticos is idiotic approach. young "galacticos" from lesser leagues - pure gamble
Whoever payed £116 million for Wirtz should be fired
Didn't de Bruyne flop the first time around, as did Salah? Or do you mean at the same club without leaving first?
Depends if he stays to long at Liverpool. Their style doesn't match him at all. I am just happy he went with them instead of Pep.
Gotze was getting "better than Hazard and Neymar" shouts when the three were the hottest young prospects around
I'm not sure what that is supposed to be telling us? I guess the implication is that Wirtz could turn out to be like Henry or Sterling. But, based on that, it seems more likely he will turn out to be a very average player.
Give me an example of someone who's looked as anonymous as Wirtz who's then turned out to just need time to settle in and gone on to look like a £130m player?
He might improve once he gets used to the league, but only in the sense he'll look slightly less completely useless..
Still early days, but he looks shocking. He has massive issues with the intensity of the league and the Liverpool players dont see him as the go to guy. At Leverkusen, he was the star player, and here he is just one of many and you can see.
I would wait until next season to judge him properly, but this is a worrying start for him and Liverpool. There is a realsitic chance he may never adapt to the league or team and be a massive flop. He was very good at Leverkusen over a couple of seasons, but maybe he needs a specfic setup, to be the star man in a slower and less physical league to have his qualities shine through. He certainly is a good player, but maybe far from a top one.
I would wait until next season to judge him properly, but this is a worrying start for him and Liverpool. There is a realsitic chance he may never adapt to the league or team and be a massive flop. He was very good at Leverkusen over a couple of seasons, but maybe he needs a specfic setup, to be the star man in a slower and less physical league to have his qualities shine through. He certainly is a good player, but maybe far from a top one.
One has bad attitude and one doesn’t.
He wasn’t getting talked about much as Liverpool was winning games and top of the league… it’s when you’re in bad form and losing you need your 130m players to start stepping up. Even Isak looks lost and Salah doesn’t look like he cares this season.
Gravenberch is probably the only one that comes close, but even he’s not a 100m player. He also wasn’t a big signing at the time and arrived in different circumstances.
Caicedo started slowly but it felt inevitable he l’d turn out good as he’d already done it in the PL.
Liverpool won't see the best if him till Salah is gone and everything goes through wirtz.
Players like him, Donny Van Der Beek etc are system players, in the right system they flourish otherwise...
Players like him, Donny Van Der Beek etc are system players, in the right system they flourish otherwise...
wouldn't say he's a system player, that doesn't even make sense
I would say that he is a ball dominant player though, and that is an issue, because he doesn't get on the ball enough right now. Part of it is Liverpool wants to play through the wings so yeah, in that sense Salah is kind of the problem. But also a big part is Wirtz just not getting open, taking up wrong/bad positions
I actually think the chart leans more towards this very conclusion.
The majority of the goal contributions (569) are concentrated in the top 3. Henry is a complete statistical anomaly. Then you have Sterling and Sutton who were 17 and 19 years when they made their debuts. It’s perfectly normal that they didn’t score or assist as they were teenagers who were breaking into first team football.
Those three aside, only Jota has moved to the PL in his early 20s like Wirtz, had a quiet start and then went on to rack up numbers.
So even with a good attitude he can’t surpass Sancho with a bad one. Damning.
Is this being spoken about in the German media or forums? If so, what is being said?
Doesn't this work both ways? 2 decades of United dominance surely led to an increase in the number of United fans/journalists?
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Similar to Götze back then, the fault is perceived to lie with the club and not the player. Wirtz, as of right now, can do no wrong in the eye of the German public. He’s extremely well liked.
It will take an awful lot of bad games for that opinion to turn.
In their eagerness to defend 009 Wirtz & give him the "license to chill", they forgot to double check their research notes:
£116m
I'll readily admit that I only caught a remark here or there - I don't really tend to follow a lot of German sports media and opinion pieces. But I'd agree that it does seem like there's a whole lot of deflection of blame going on from what I noticed. Stuff like blaming the transfer for the lack of success is too simple, it's the change in system that makes them struggle, is something I've heard repeatedly. That Wirtz just was very unlucky so far, or that he hasn't really gelled with the team so far and the runs and passing routes aren't locked in yet.
Nobody seems to say that Wirtz just isn't playing well. Which I'd call at least questionable.
Cheers. So the notion is that Liverpool need to carve out a proper role for him, rather than him having to fit into what they are currently doing?