Florian Wirtz: Liverpool’s ‘Cheeky’ Record-Breaker Unafraid of Difficult Decisions | OneFootball

“Rotzig” is the word Florian Wirtz, the most expensive transfer in the history over Liverpool and the entirety of British football, has used to describe himself. In typical German fashion, there is no exact English translation. It’s somewhere between “cheeky” and “arrogant.” “Brazen”, if not almost “cocky.”

This sense of confidence with an edge perfectly captures Wirtz’s approach on and off the pitch. Whether it’s the type of pass he should deploy or the club he should join, he has always known what he wants.

Like countless children all over the globe, a young Florian was asked by his teacher to write down what he wanted to be when he grew up. Wirtz’s mum kept that scrap of paper and unfurled it on his 18th birthday. There was one word on it: “Fußballer.” Unlike almost every other daydreaming kid, Wirtz fulfilled that ambition.

Even when making difficult decisions during his dream career, the spindly playmaker has demonstrated an iron will. Liverpool’s move for Wirtz this summer seemingly materialised out of nothing, quashing the very public and confident pursuit from Bayern Munich because Wirtz—and his unique support system—bucked the trend of German talent getting sucked into the vortex of the perennial Bundesliga champions. Wirtz, it’s fair to say, has never been fazed by a bit of controversy.

Footballing Family

Florian Wirtz’s family all donned his No. 17 shirt at Euro 2024. / IMAGO/Sportfoto Rudel

While Leverkusen’s departing gem failed to lead his team back to the heights of the 2023–24 unbeaten domestic double, one member of the Wirtz family did appear in a final this season. Juliane Wirtz, born almost two years before her little brother Florian, ended an injury-plagued campaign with a cameo appearance in the Frauen-DFB Pokal final (the showpiece fixture in Germany’s major women’s domestic cup).

Juliane’s Werder Bremen team ended up on the losing side, but her footballing career has played a huge role in Florian’s prodigious development. Alongside the huge benefit of having an older sibling as a ready-made teammate and opponent at all times—an unheralded trait which is common among many elite athletes—Wirtz had a pair of coaches for parents.

Wirtz’s father Hans-Joachim had him kicking a ball around when he was still two years young. By the ripe old age of four, he was enrolled into the youth team of Grün-Weiß Brauweiler, the local club of which Wirtz Sr. is still the chairman. “You could already see that he had some skill with the ball,” Hans-Joachim proudly recalled. It wasn’t until Wirtz turned eight that he left Brauweiler to join a professional youth team.

Yet, as Juliane was keen to point out in an interview with FVM earlier this year, her dad doesn’t deserve all the credit. “The male football world often forgets that our mum also taught us a lot to get where we are,” she rightly noted in a nod to her mother, Karin Groß. “With Flori, who has many coordination skills that we learned earlier, and our mum was very supportive of that.”

As Wirtz would point out himself, “There are very few family members who didn’t play football.”

Both parents remain entwined in the career of their son, acting as his agents without the assistance of any professional representation. It is Groß, 63, who handles the finances while Hans-Joachim, 71, speaks directly to sporting directors and club chiefs. Both have been kept busy negotiating with Liverpool, although this complex, record-shattering arrangement may very well have been far simpler than Wirtz’s first professional move.

Köln Controversy

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Once 1. FC Köln sparked mass outrage by poaching a 12-year-old Marco Quotschalla from Bayer Leverkusen in 2001, the two clubs separated by less than 10 miles in Germany’s Rhineland agreed to stop feeding off each other’s youth teams. Quotschalla had retired from professional football without making a single senior appearance for either club by the time Wirtz made the short yet seismic trip from Köln to Leverkusen at the start of 2020, but the furore was even greater this time.

Some local media outlets at the time claimed that Leverkusen’s plot to lure Wirtz along the Rhine began by signing his sister Juliane a year earlier. Yet, Bayer had been interested in Florian when he first joined Köln, dutifully tracking his concussive rise through the various youth teams over the following decade.

The idea of moving on from FC—a club which the Wirtz family still has an “emotional connection” to—was always on the cards. When Wirtz moved up to Köln’s under-16s, he was offered a three-year deal to take him into adulthood. The “family council” insisted instead on only two years.

This allowed him to run down his agreement with Köln before signing for Leverkusen as a free agent on a professional deal which theoretically circumnavigated the pact. Köln’s manager at the time, Steffan Baumgart, wasn’t impressed. “That this [agreement] was ignored shows us what kind of business we are in,” the flat cap-clad coach huffed.

Leverkusen transfer chief Rudi Völler showed little remorse. It would have been “grossly negligent” not to do the deal, he shrugged.

Wirtz’s family bear no ill-will to their local team—even if some chants are rather unpleasant to hear. “The fact that the Köln team didn’t have the right instincts is something you have to forgive the club, because they were in a difficult leadership situation,” Wirtz Sr. explained to Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger. Shortly before Florian was whisked away, Köln’s hierarchy had been derailed by a raft of personnel changes on the board and in the sporting department, creating a vacuum of chaos for Leverkusen to pounce.

“I saw better prospects for myself in Leverkusen,” Wirtz bluntly told the Bundesliga years later, “and it worked out that way too.” Liverpool certainly hope their late swoop—a British record transfer—will be just as successful.