Florian Wirtz: A Potentially Landscape-Changing Signing for Liverpool

….and what the German international will bring to Slot’s side

Written on 31/05/2025, before a deal between Liv

erpool and Bayer Leverkusen is struck, but personal terms are agreed.

As it stands, Florian Wirtz has rejected Bayern Munich and Manchester City and said yes to coming to Liverpool this summer. There are also reports that the German international has agreed a five-year contract with the Reds, and personal terms are not an issue. The fee agreement between the clubs may take some time, but that is normal given the asking price in question here, which is around £126 million.

Liverpool have acted quickly this summer so far. They have already announced the signing of Jeremie Frimpong just hours after Trent Alexander-Arnold departed early to join Real Madrid for the Club World Cup. The Reds are also strongly linked with a move for Milos Kerkez. However, for now, the focus seems to be on striking a deal to finalise the signing of Wirtz.

If done, it would be a landscape-changing scalp for the Premier League champions. In the transfer market, Liverpool have notoriously been the club that buys players who are on the cusp of becoming world-class. They develop them and either sell for a higher value or use them before they enter their mid-30s (with the exception of Mohamed Salah and Virgil van Dijk).

Wirtz is already a world-class talent who is 22 and ready to become one of the poster boys of football for the coming decade. Getting him would signal an intent from Liverpool that they are prepared to kick on as defending champions of England next season and create the best possible squad to retain the title.

Using data, let’s take a deeper look at the German international and what he can bring to Arne Slot’s team at Anfield.

Before going any further, it’s worth noting that Wirtz is now one of the very few players to have won back-to-back Bundesliga Player of the Year awards.

Across the 2023/24 and 2024/25 seasons, only three players rank in the top bracket for non-penalty goals plus assists and shot-creating actions across Europe’s top leagues – Wirtz is one of them, as illustrated in the Venn diagram below.

If the deal goes through as planned, Liverpool will have two of the three best players in Europe in terms of goal contribution and chance creation over the past 24 months. Not bad, that!

In the 2024/25 season, Wirtz ranked in the top five for non-penalty goals plus assist rate among wingers and attacking midfielders in Europe’s top leagues (0.77 per 90).

He’s been outperforming the expected numbers in these metrics by a decent yet notable margin (+0.27 per 90 overperformance for both non-penalty goals and assists).

The 22-year-old is an attacking midfielder who has a good shot in him. He may not always find himself in the best positions to score, as shown by the low average quality of chances (xG per shot), but he does have the technique to find the net.