🔍 The Fixation on Florian Wirtz

Say what you like about international breaks – they’re boring, they get in the way of the real business of the club season, there’s too many of them – but they have come to be defined, in my mind, by their one colossal advantage: Liverpool do not lose during them. My weekend will not be stained by the tang of disappointment. And that is something for which I can only be thankful.

This week’s newsletter is an attempt to explore both aspects of that (admittedly quite puerile) sentiment. I could have written about any number of Liverpool players who have found the first few months of the season a challenge – the whole squad, apart from Dominik Szoboszlai, who is beyond reproach – but Florian Wirtz may be the most intriguing of them.

And I do not think I am alone in feeling a strange sense of relief that there is no club football this weekend. We talked on the podcast this week about why so many fans seem to have such hair-trigger tempers these days, and I’ve spent the last few days contemplating how many clubs are actually happy in the Premier League at the moment. It is not, I think, very many.

Barely four months into his Premier League career, we can say with some assurance that Florian Wirtz is already very much a Main Character. Just not, perhaps, in quite the way he might have wanted and Liverpool might have anticipated when the club spent somewhere in the region of $120 million to prise him from Bayer Leverkusen over the summer. 

It is hard to remember, now, but there were few dissenting voices at the time of his move. It was a lot of money, of course, but it was not difficult to justify the outlay. The 22-year-old was one of the Bundesliga’s outstanding players. He had inspired Leverkusen to the first championship in the club’s history. He was, as a former executive at Liverpool told me, the sort of player who would be “all things to all men.” There are no certainties in recruitment, obviously. But Wirtz was as close as you would get.

It is not exactly a shock twist to suggest it has not worked out like that. Wirtz is by no means the only player who has struggled at Liverpool this season. He has, in fact, not even been the champions’ worst performer, a dubious honor that would probably be shared at this point by Ibrahima Konaté, Miloš Kerkez and (maybe most surprisingly) Alexis Mac Allister. 

Wirtz, though, has suffered a worse fate than all of them; the worst fate, in fact, that can befall a major signing. Florian Wirtz must now come to terms with the fact that he has become a talking point. Much of the justified criticism of Liverpool’s displays this season now centers on him: he is a symbol of Arne Slot’s team’s shortcomings, a lightning rod for all of their troubles.

We do not need to rehash all of it, obviously, but here are some highlights. Jamie Carragher has called for him to be removed from the team almost as a humane measure. Arsene Wenger has suggested Slot “blew up his midfield” to accommodate him. Gary Neville has said, kindly, that Wirtz might be “trying too hard” and, less so, that he is now “a problem.” 

It has spiraled from there. Slot now faces a barrage of questions over his deployment of the second-most expensive signing in Liverpool’s history on a twice-weekly basis. Julian Nagelsmann, the Germany coach, has now been moved to defend him – deflecting the criticism toward first his club teammates, and then his club manager – both during the October international break and the November one. Creating that sort of tension is not, of course, in anyone’s interests.

None of this, at first glance, requires any great explanation. Wirtz cost a lot of money. He has not, as yet, produced. Slot has struggled to find a way to fit him into a cohesive team. That is the sort of riddle that can, in time, cost a manager their job.

Besides, there is a simple mathematical conundrum to Liverpool this season. A championship-winning team has been reinforced with $500 million worth of talent, and it has got noticeably – drastically, in fact – worse. This does not fit with the way we understand soccer, or even the way soccer is meant to work. It is natural and unavoidable that trying to unpick that knot will involve forensic and unforgiving analysis of each moving part.

To me, though, the fixation on Wirtz runs deeper, in three ways. The first is to do with the way we assess players. That has changed in recent years in a fundamental way, thanks not only to soccer’s embrace of data, but to the rise of video games as either a gateway drug or an accouterment to the sport and to the game’s conclusive shift to a remote experience, as opposed to an in-person one.

To watch Wirtz in the flesh is to see a player who is, without any shadow of a doubt, brilliant. There is something in his lightness of touch, his smoothness of movement, even his relentless busyness, that makes it clear he is an extraordinarily talented footballer. I have seen him live three or four times this season. He has, as far as I can tell, played well on each occasion.

His numbers, though, do not bear that out, and that is increasingly how we judge players: not on their style, their emotional effect, but through their output. We have, in this, lost something: an ability to appreciate that soccer is an art form, as well as an industry, and that there is value in being the sort of player who justifies the ticket price. (It is worth noting, too, that Wirtz’s lack of assists is only partly his fault: he has created more chances than most in the Premier League. As Nagelsmann has said, it’s not down to him if his teammates insist on missing.)

The second lies in the balance of power between player and club. Slot, reportedly, convinced Wirtz to move to Liverpool by promising to play him as a No. 10, his theoretically favored position. The idea that he might have to play elsewhere has, as Wenger illustrated, been treated as a form of betrayal. It is an argument that has gained considerable traction in an era which focuses increasingly on individual stars, rather than the collective unit of the team. 

And yet this is, surely, too simplistic. The relationship between the player and the club runs both ways. The club has a duty to get the best out of a player, of course, but the player also has to prove that they are worthy of the club. To suggest that Liverpool have let Wirtz down in some way is to ignore the fact that perhaps Liverpool might have been expecting Wirtz to impact his reality a little more decisively.

But the most significant element has been the uneasy relationship that English soccer has always had with playmakers. The Premier League has traditionally proved a hostile environment for players who might be cast as No. 10s, an echo of a longstanding and insular suspicion that they are a largely foreign affectation. 

There are, certainly, plenty of wondrously creative players who have come to England and been lost in the mud and the frenzy: Oliver Holt, writing in the Daily Mail – don’t hold that against him, he’s very good – offered Juan Sebastián Verón, who struggled at both Manchester United and Chelsea but shone in Italy, as a cautionary tale.

The fear is that Wirtz, having arrived just as English soccer seems to have forgotten all of the continental sophistication it has learned in recent years and reverted to set-piece slinging, long-throw launching type, will go the same way. He is clearly a beautiful player to watch, blessed with sumptuous technique and bottomless reserves of energy, but perhaps this is not the right place, or the right time, for him.

As Holt pointed out, though, this argument does not really hold water. Dennis Bergkamp was playing in England at the same time as Verón, and he did just fine. A more modern comparison would be Martin Ødegaard, who is no more a creature of blood and thunder than Wirtz; that has not stopped the Norwegian from becoming Arsenal’s central creative force. 

What both needed, of course, was time and space: they had to adapt to their surroundings, to get used to their teammates, to understand the oddities and curiosities of the Premier League. They also required a team that was built to accentuate their strengths, and to mask their weaknesses. The real worry with Wirtz is not his talent, his ability, but his circumstances. Slot seems no closer to solving the riddle he has been set by Liverpool’s recruitment. And with every poor result, every poor performance, there is more noise, more tension, more doubt. Wirtz has become the wrong sort of Main Character. There is no guarantee he will be able to escape it.

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A couple of years ago, the city of Liverpool stepped in to hold Eurovision – my second-favorite night of the year, after Bonfire Night – when Ukraine, the previous year’s champion and therefore the designated host, was unable to do so because of Russia’s ongoing invasion. For the most part, Liverpool did itself (and more importantly Ukraine) proud. 

There was just one note of controversy: one of the musical montages closed with a version of “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” This was taken as an affront by the city’s Evertonian contingent, who – not unfairly – felt their passion should have been represented on stage, too. The only question was how. The theme from “Z Cars,” maybe? Or, as one Liverpool-supporting respondent suggested, maybe there was a better homage to Goodison Park: perhaps the crowd ought to have been invited to boo for 30 seconds to a minute.

A joke – OBVIOUSLY – but one rooted in an undeniable truth. Goodison was always, in my memory, one of those stadiums that felt primed to boo. It had been conditioned by bitter experience to expect the worst; repeated exposure meant that it was always ready to express its dissatisfaction with its team, with its players, with the general cruelty of life. 

There was a reason for that, of course: Everton has had some difficult times in recent years; there have been plenty of occasions for (valid) complaints. The same is true of plenty of clubs. There are times when booing your own team, or calling for your own manager or board to be fired, might not be excusable, but can at least be understood.

What is strange, now, is how that appears to be the default setting for so many teams. It has almost become detached from achievement. Spurs fans offered unflattering reviews of their side’s first-half performance against Manchester United, at a time when winning would have sent the club second in the Premier League. 

Quite why this might be is a matter for a longer post, but explanations range from fans gradually being turned into customers, the elision between the online and offline worlds, and the hyperbolic saturation coverage that has turned what is supposed to be a leisure activity into a performance of identity. (We discussed this on Libero, a deep-cut sort of a podcast.) 

That made me wonder how many Premier League fans might currently consider themselves to be happy. Sunderland, obviously. Bournemouth and Crystal Palace are both living versions of the dream. I’d say Brentford, too, still enjoying their club’s presence in the Premier League. But that is roughly it: even Arsenal may well be too on edge to be truly happy, although euphoria at the end of the season would more than make up for it. Any others? And if not, what does that say about what soccer is doing for – and to – us?

Rog and Rory react to Premier League Matchday 11 and break down Manchester City's dominant performance over Liverpool, Sunderland's last-minute draw with league-leaders Arsenal, and Tottenham getting a point at home against rejuvenated Manchester United. Watch on YouTube or listen here.

World Cup qualifying has been something of a slow-burn in Europe – and that is putting it very kindly – but I still have a sort of vague, lingering hope that it might all prove worth it over the next few days. The standout fixture, by some way, comes in Milan on Sunday (2:45 p.m. ET, FOX Sports), when Italy hosts Norway. An Italian win would not, most likely, save the country the stress of another playoff, but it would offer a vital boost in self-esteem.

And then there is the denouement to which I am personally most attached. Scotland travel to Greece on Saturday (2:45 p.m. ET, FOX Sports) and then host Denmark in Glasgow on Tuesday (2:45 p.m. ET, Fubo). A draw and a win would take the country to its first World Cup since 1998, but only if they happen in that order. (Two wins would also do, obviously.) This is as close as the Scots have been in a generation. It would be agonizing to miss out now.

It is a source of considerable stress to me to discover – twice in one week – that people are actively following my recommendations for food: Dan Lachman emailed in to say he’d been to Nannarella in Lisbon for a gelato (although he did not provide details of flavors sampled for the community) and Greg Kahn sent a photo – appropriately enough – of London’s Roti King. Both seemed happy with their choices. But it is a lot of pressure. 

Although it does remind me: I’ll be in Boston, quite briefly, for our live show at the start of December. Please feel free to tell me where I should go and what I should eat.

Meanwhile, Rob Garrett has been reading the work of my former colleague Michael Cox, who has argued that “increasing [the number] of substitutes from three to five actually increased the adverse [physical] impact on players: in short, more fresh legs means games keep a higher tempo for longer, and there’s therefore more stress on players who aren’t substituted. Is this a valid argument? Should we actually be looking to reduce the number of substitutes if we want to combat player fatigue and injury?”

It is a completely valid argument, Rob, and like a lot of Michael’s work, it is extremely smart. Soccer as a rule is governed by the law of unintended consequences, and I can absolutely buy that this is another of them. As for reducing the number of substitutions, it may not work to reduce fatigue – and attendant injuries – but it would go quite a long way to preventing the major teams stockpiling players: the more subs they can bring on, after all, the deeper their squads can run without players expressing dissatisfaction. And that alone would be reason to do it.

That’s all for this week – keep your emails coming to right here, and if you do happen to follow one of my recommendations, please let me know. But remember: I will require a full assessment of the type of gelato.

Have a great weekend,
Rory