Liverpool's Wirtz Gamble Reaches Critical Juncture
Liverpool did not buy Florian Wirtz to be a project. They bought him to be a pillar. A difference-maker. A player who bends games his way at Anfield and far beyond.
Right now, he is none of those things. And the clock is getting louder.
The club’s heavy investment in the German playmaker was meant to anchor the early years of this new cycle at Liverpool, but as the 2026-27 season stutters into life, Wirtz is still searching for a spark. Two seasons was always going to be the rough cut-off for patience on Merseyside. It may not even stretch that far.
Didi Hamann, speaking to GOAL in association with Betinia NJ, did not dress it up. Asked what Wirtz needs from this campaign and when the exit rumours could really start to bite, he said: “He's got to start playing well. He has to start influencing the game.”
This is the core of the problem.
A luxury player without the luxury returns
Hamann’s assessment is blunt. He sees a player drifting through games rather than dictating them. “I think he's a player who floats,” he said, questioning whether Wirtz has earned the kind of respect that allows a creative talent to be excused some of the dirty work.
Top dressing-room hierarchies are simple. If others are going to win the ball back for you, you have to make it count when it reaches your feet. Ten touches. Six, seven, eight of them need to threaten something. Territory. Chances. Goals.
“With Wirtz,” Hamann argued, “that's just not the case.”
Instead, the 23-year-old has been chasing back, filling gaps, running himself into the ground without leaving a mark where it matters most. “Now he's working very hard going backwards. I think sometimes he's doing too much. He wants to help the team because he sees that he can influence the game going forward,” Hamann said, suggesting the balance in his game has tipped the wrong way.
The irony is cruel. The more Wirtz tries to prove his worth off the ball, the further he drifts from the reason Liverpool bought him in the first place. “He's not there to win balls, he's there to set up goals and score goals.”
Last season, Hamann counts only “a handful of games” where Wirtz truly did that. For a marquee signing, that is nowhere near enough.
Premier League weight and the Veron warning
Every struggling import gets the same line thrown at them: the Premier League is more physical, more intense, more unforgiving. That part is true. Some brilliant players have needed time to adapt. Others never quite managed it.
Hamann reached back to the case of Juan Sebastian Veron, who arrived in England lauded as one of the best midfielders in the world, only to last a single season at Manchester United before heading back to Italy. “Some just can't do it or don't want to do it,” Hamann said.
For Wirtz, the grace period is over. Hamann admits he initially urged patience. “I said the first two or three months, give him time. I said he's too good to fail.”
Then the season rolled past Christmas. Performances stayed flat. The tone changed. “Once it went past Christmas, I said, I don't think he's going to crack it anymore because it's too long now. Because expectations are not getting any less.”
The pressure has not eased this term. It has sharpened.
Wirtz was substituted after 60 minutes in Liverpool’s opening game of the new campaign. That detail matters. It signals a manager who cannot wait for form to arrive on its own. Hamann is clear: if Wirtz does not start influencing games “in the next three or four weeks”, the upcoming, extended international break could become a storm.
“I think we have a lot of paper talk, a lot of discussions, whether the club should have bought him, which is obviously too late because he's there. And maybe him thinking, ‘well, maybe this is not for me’.”
At that point, the conversation shifts from “how do we get the best out of him?” to “what happens next?”
Hamann does not rule out a dramatic answer: “I think something will happen because for a player of that magnitude, of that stature, the amount of money he costs, it's simply not enough. You've got to find a solution somehow, maybe even in winter, if things don't get better.”
The position puzzle – No.10 or drifting wide?
Even now, Liverpool have not fully solved the question that has followed Wirtz for years: what is his best position?
Some see him as a classic No.10, operating between the lines, threading passes and arriving late in the box. Others argue he looks more dangerous starting on the left, drifting inside onto his stronger foot, attacking half-spaces and full-backs.
Hamann, a Champions League winner with Liverpool, is not convinced that the positional debate should carry the blame. “He was bought to be the main man. And I wouldn't blame it on the position that he plays on the left,” he said.
He recalls how the internal messaging should have hardened months ago. “There does come a point, and I think the point was last year after Christmas, where somebody should have said, ‘listen lad, either you do it or in the summer, we see what's happening in the World Cup, maybe we've got to find a solution’. Because they can't wait forever.”
That is the crux. If you are the designated No.10 and you do not create enough chances or score enough goals, someone else has to play. If you are shifted wide and still do not produce, the excuses run out even faster.
Especially now. Bradley Barcola has arrived, adding fresh competition in those attacking lanes. “If you've got a number 10 who doesn't create the chances or doesn't score enough goals, then obviously somebody else has to play - especially with [Bradley] Barcola coming in. It's a tricky situation for players in England,” Hamann noted.
A looming decision
Liverpool backed their judgement with a huge fee and a central role. Wirtz was supposed to be the heartbeat of the next Liverpool side, not a tactical puzzle that nobody can quite solve.
The next few weeks will not just shape his season. They could define his entire Liverpool story.
Either he finally bends games his way, or the club that once saw him as the future will start planning a future without him.
