Florian Wirtz can buck the ‘Havertz trend' and thrive at Liverpool

New York Times

4 days ago

Without the necessary context, the record-breaking transfer of Florian Wirtz to Liverpool will draw obvious comparisons with a fellow countryman.
Certainly, the theme of 'Young German attacker leaves Bayer Leverkusen to join an English club for a vast amount of money' gives off strong vibes of Kai Havertz's move to Chelsea in 2020.
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Back then, Havertz was the best young talent in Germany and attracting interest from every major club across Europe. Bayern Munich went to great lengths to explain to the player where he would fit into their team but never made an official bid, largely because of Leverkusen's asking price. Real Madrid also had reservations due to financial difficulties on the back of the pandemic, so Chelsea, who were recruiting from a position of strength after a transfer ban, jumped in and agreed to a £71million ($91.3m at current exchange rates) record-breaking move.
Sound familiar? Well, with Wirtz, the move from the Bundesliga to the Premier League is a little more nuanced. Manchester City were interested, but the 22-year-old quickly fell in love with Liverpool. When Bayern, who had tracked him extensively for years, realised they would be fighting a losing battle, they backed off. Real Madrid didn't bother, either, as new manager Xabi Alonso, who coached Wirtz at Leverkusen, knew where his heart lay.
Some of the basics around the two deals are the same, albeit for different reasons.
Liverpool's inactivity in previous windows has allowed for such a huge outlay on one star player; again, the gem of German football is moving to England as the most expensive outgoing ever (for a German) and, just like Havertz to Chelsea, Wirtz to Liverpool is also a record-breaking deal for an outfield player. If the add-ons in the £116m transfer are achieved, Wirtz will be the biggest sale from a Bundesliga club and the record sum spent by a Premier League club on one player.
Those are obvious similarities, but Liverpool will hope they do not extend any further. Other than scoring the winning goal in the 2021 Champions League final against Manchester City, Havertz's time at Chelsea was not a success.
Havertz, known for his elegance, technical qualities and, more recently, physicality, is a different player from Wirtz, who is more of a dynamic dribbler. He will also be fitting into a very different setup at Anfield on the back of a title win.
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Havertz is not the only much-vaunted German talent to arrive in the Premier League and struggle to live up to expectations. Timo Werner also struggled at Chelsea and Leroy Sane's performances at Manchester City became increasingly inconsistent before he left in 2020. Further down the food chain, Max Meyer — once hailed as the future heart of Germany's midfield — sunk without trace after joining Crystal Palace as a 22-year-old in 2018 and is now playing in the Cypriot league for APOEL.
Will Wirtz buck that trend? Those who have watched him regularly have no doubts.
'One of the reasons I'm convinced he will be a success at Liverpool is that he can look after himself,' says former Liverpool midfielder Dietmar Hamann, who made the move from Germany to England in 1998 when he left Bayern to join Newcastle United. 'He's like a street kid. He won't shirk a challenge. He will be one of the main players at Liverpool next season. He won't be worried or afraid about the physical side of the Premier League.'
There is, of course, no shortage of German players who have come to England and flourished. Jurgen Klinsmann (Tottenham Hotspur), Michael Ballack (Chelsea), Ilkay Gundogan (Manchester City), Pascal Gross (Brighton & Hove Albion) and Per Mertesacker (Arsenal) became mainstays of their clubs, helping erase the memory of others who were not always successful, including Lukas Podolski and, in the second half of his Arsenal career at least, Mesut Ozil.
There are more question marks over up-and-coming German imports — as there tends to be with any up-and-coming footballer — but Wirtz is already operating at a higher level than most of his contemporaries by age. It means the argument that he can achieve everything that is already expected of him at Anfield is compelling.
Liverpool see Wirtz as a versatile and seasoned attacking asset. He has won the Bundesliga and DFB-Pokal double with Leverkusen and experienced Champions League and international football. There is also potential to grow in value and Liverpool have shown in the past that when they believe a player can be genuinely transformational to the team, they invest big money. Now they hope Wirtz will be more like the success stories of Alisson and Virgil van Dijk, rather than Darwin Nunez, now sadly regarded as an expensive error.
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'He's exceptional, the best player we've got in Germany,' adds Hamann, a Champions League winner at Liverpool in 2005. 'He's not cheap, but he's a player who makes other players around him better. I don't have any worries at all about him, partly because he's already been part of a team which has won big titles. What was different with Havertz, Sane and Werner was the (performance at the time of the) clubs they moved from.'
When Sane moved from Schalke to Manchester City for £37m and was crowned the PFA Young Player of the Year in 2018 after his second season, he appeared to be on the verge of great things. Yet he surprisingly missed out on Germany's 2018 World Cup squad, starting a downward spiral he has not arrested.
It wasn't as if his time at the Etihad was a failure. He scored 39 goals in 135 appearances and won the Premier League twice, but by the time he left for Bayern Munich in 2020, Pep Guardiola had decided he was no longer a key component in his side.
Werner, a target for Liverpool before he moved to Chelsea in 2020, also struggled in the Premier League due to what former Arsenal and Barcelona forward Thierry Henry described to CBS as a 'lack of confidence'. Werner scored 23 goals in 89 appearances across two seasons at Chelsea following a £50m move from RB Leipzig, but returned two years later for almost half the amount they paid for him. 'It didn't happen for him in England because he just wasn't good enough,' Hamann says. 'We've seen that in the last few years.'
Havertz, who is now at Arsenal, has well-established 'all-rounder' capabilities, but has also endured long periods of frustration at both clubs.
'He's done better than people give him credit for,' Hamann adds. 'He's gifted and he's done a decent job in a position he didn't really want to play and could still win big trophies at Arsenal. But he moved from a Leverkusen side who hadn't won anything and he wasn't dealing with big pressure (at Chelsea).
'Wirtz doesn't lack confidence or grit. He's a tough kid. It's also easier when you're joining a team that dominates possession, like Liverpool will do. I've got no doubts that he will be a success.'
(Top photos: Kai Havertz, left, and Florian Wirtz; Getty Images)