Florian Wirtz has been placed under renewed scrutiny at Liverpool after Didi Hamann suggested the German’s £116m move could ultimately be abandoned if his performances do not improve. The former Liverpool and Germany midfielder’s intervention follows another sharp assessment from Jamie Carragher, who has questioned whether Wirtz has shown enough of the qualities the club expected when they signed him.
The immediate trigger was Wirtz’s display in Liverpool’s 1-0 victory at Bournemouth. He left the pitch after 71 minutes having struggled to make a sustained attacking impact, despite Liverpool taking the points. Carragher judged it among the weakest outings he has seen from the 23-year-old in a Liverpool shirt, while Hamann went further by portraying the transfer as a poor fit rather than a temporary dip.
That is an emphatic conclusion after a difficult opening spell, but it remains too soon to treat it as a settled verdict.
Criticism centres on impact, not merely output
Carragher’s concern is broader than Wirtz’s current return of one assist in six appearances this season. His argument is that the midfielder has not regularly controlled matches or created the moments expected from an elite attacking signing. Hamann made a similar point, saying a player bought for that fee must decide games in the final third more often.
There is a fair basis for asking those questions. A price tag of £116m does not leave much room for a quiet adaptation period, particularly at a club accustomed to competing for major honours. Wirtz’s first Liverpool campaign was below the level he established at Bayer Leverkusen, and his latest performance has intensified the sense that he is yet to impose his preferred rhythm on English football.
But the commentary risks merging two different claims: that Wirtz has been disappointing, and that Liverpool have discovered his true ceiling. The first is defensible. The second requires substantially more evidence.
Bournemouth offered a more complicated picture
The Bournemouth game illustrates why the debate should not be reduced to a single poor rating. Wirtz’s passing was imprecise and he surrendered possession too often, flaws that were visible without needing advanced analysis. He completed 26 of 37 attempts and repeatedly failed to connect simple passes in crowded areas.
Yet he also created three chances, matching Cody Gakpo for Liverpool’s highest total, won six of eight duels and recovered the ball four times. More importantly, his near-post movement helped create the decisive sequence for Alexander Isak’s goal. It will not appear as an assist because a defender intervened before the striker finished, but the run altered the space and mattered to the move.
That does not make it a good performance. It does show the limits of presenting Wirtz as anonymous. Creative players can look untidy because they receive the ball where pressure is greatest and attempt passes that safer midfielders do not. The challenge for Liverpool is to turn those intermittent contributions into authority over 90 minutes, not simply ask him to stop taking risks.
Context should not become an excuse
Multiple reports recognise that Wirtz entered an unusually difficult environment. Liverpool’s squad was dealing with the death of Diogo Jota, and former defender Andy Robertson has described how football felt secondary for a period as new arrivals tried to settle. The disruption does not erase a disappointing debut season, but it is highly relevant when judging how quickly a young player should have become a leading figure.
There were also signs last season that Wirtz retained the underlying tools. He created 95 open-play chances across all competitions, comfortably more than any Liverpool teammate, even though his goals and assists did not reflect the pre-transfer expectations. His three assists in four World Cup appearances for Germany offered another reminder that his capacity to unlock defences has not disappeared.
Liverpool have additionally seen glimpses this season. Reports point to encouraging displays against Nottingham Forest and Atlético Madrid, when Wirtz was central to several of the side’s most dangerous attacks. Those matches do not cancel the ineffective ones against Bournemouth, Newcastle, Ipswich or Fulham. They do make the claim that he is simply incapable of translating his game to Liverpool harder to sustain.
The unanswered tactical question
The key issue is not whether Wirtz is talented; his Leverkusen record settled that long ago. During their title-winning 2023-24 campaign, he was one of Europe’s most productive attacking players, combining 18 goals with 19 assists in 47 matches. The more pressing question is whether Liverpool have consistently built a structure that lets him receive between the lines, turn and combine close to goal.
At Leverkusen, Wirtz had a system that regularly created central overloads and runners around him. At Liverpool, he has at times appeared detached from the forward line or asked to collect the ball too far from the areas where his imagination is most damaging. Better spacing, clearer rotations and improved understanding with Isak could change the texture of his performances as much as any individual improvement.
Hamann is right that a club paying this level of fee will demand more, and Carragher is entitled to doubt what he sees. But Wirtz is not being judged after one bad afternoon; he is being judged amid a noisy reaction to a challenging first year and a handful of early-season games. Liverpool need clearer answers from him. They are not yet entitled to assume there are none.