Liverpool splash out on Wirtz and Kerkez

21 Jun 2025
THE GUARDIAN / Sport
Will Unwin

Liverpool have confirmed the signing of Florian Wirtz from Bayer Leverkusen. The German will cost a club record £100m and his price could rise with add-ons to £116m, which would make him the most expensive British transfer.

Leverkusen had wanted €150m (£127.6m) for the 22-year-old, who also attracted interest from Bayern Munich, but weeks of talks brought down the price. Wirtz, an attacking midfielder, scored 16 goals and provided 15 assists in the past season in 45 club appearances. He has signed a five-year deal at Anfield.

Wirtz, who has played 31 times for Germany, succeeds Darwin Núñez as Liverpool’s record signing. Núñez arrived from Benfica in June 2022 in an £85m deal but he is for sale after an underwhelming spell.

“I feel very happy and very proud. Finally it’s done and I was waiting for a long time,” Wirtz said on Liverpool’s website. “I’m really excited to have a new adventure in front of me. This was also a big point of my thoughts: that I want to have something completely new, to go out of the Bundesliga and to join the Premier League.

“I will see how I can perform. I hope I can do my best. I spoke also with some players who played [at Liverpool] and they told me that it’s perfect for me and every pitch is perfect, you can enjoy every game. I’m really looking forward to playing my first game.

“I would like to win everything every year. First of all, we have to do our work, I have to make my work. In the end, we want to be successful. Last season [Liverpool] won the Premier League so my goal is for sure to win it again and also to go further in the Champions League. I’m really ambitious.”

Liverpool have also agreed a deal to sign Milos Kerkez from Bournemouth for £40m. The left-back is to undergo a medical next week before signing a five-year deal.

The 21-year-old Hungary international has enjoyed two impressive seasons with Bournemouth after joining from AZ Alkmaar in July 2023, helping them finish ninth last season. Liverpool already have two left-backs in Andy Robertson and Kostas Tsimikas. The former is of interest to Atlético Madrid and the latter could well leave after spending five years largely as a back-up to the Scotland captain.

Bournemouth have already brought in a replacement for Kerkez – Adrien Truffert from Rennes, who will battle with the January arrival Julio Soler for a starting place under Andoni Iraola next season.

Liverpool are working hard in the transfer market – they have already completed a £29.5m deal for the right-back Jeremie Frimpong from Leverkusen. There is likely to be further dealings between Liverpool and Leverkusen with the two clubs in talks over a deal for Jarell Quansah. The centre-back, who is currently representing England at the European Under-21 Championship, is valued at more than £30m by the Anfield club.

Quansah made his first-team debut early in Jürgen Klopp’s final season in charge and performed so well that he ended the campaign as a regular starter alongside Virgil van Dijk. However, the 22-year-old struggled for minutes under Arne Slot last season and now appears poised to move to Germany.

Liverpool could replace Quansah with the Crystal Palace captain, Marc Guéhi. The England defender is about to enter the final 12 months of his contract at Selhurst Park and Palace turned down a bid worth up to £70m from Tottenham in January.

In a further part of the squad renewal the goalkeeper Giorgi Mamardashvili will complete his move to Anfield from Valencia in a £29m deal agreed last summer.

***

Decisive Wirtz is ready-made to be key piece of Anfield puzzle

After his rise at Leverkusen, Liverpool’s club-record signing is well set to step outside his comfort zone
Many in his role are there to feed the striker, but Wirtz is the star a team can revolve around

21 Jun 2025
THE GUARDIAN / Sport
Andy Brassell

When the Bayern Munich charm offensive starts in earnest, few players are impervious. When months of public flattery and declarations of interest in Florian Wirtz continued past the Rekordmeister’s title celebrations in Marienplatz and the departure of Xabi Alonso from Bayer Leverkusen, the whole of German football felt they knew which way the wind was blowing.

So it is an unpleasant surprise for Munich’s finest to see the red jersey Wirtz is holding up for the camera is not theirs, but that of Liverpool, who have signed him in a deal that could reach a British record £116m. Make no mistake: this is an authentic coup for the Premier League champions. How Wirtz came to choose a future in northwest England rather than southern Germany tells us much about the personality, as well as the player.

The 22-year-old has been in the full glare of the limelight since he was 16. He made the controversial move from Köln to Leverkusen, was fast-tracked to the first team and surpassed Kai Havertz as the club’s youngest player a fortnight after his 17th birthday. Nineteen days later he became the club’s youngest scorer. Wirtz has made every stage – becoming a regular starter, playing European football, making his Germany debut at 18 – look easy without the peacocking that often goes with such extravagant talent. When his pre-euro 2024 ranking of potato dishes on the German football federation’s Tiktok account went viral (he put a “normal” potato at No 1, with much public amusement following), he grumpily remarked: “I don’t find it entertaining at all.”

No one needs to tell Wirtz that what he is doing on the pitch is what pays the bills. His father, Hans, is his agent but Wirtz Jr knows his own mind. Hans had a number of conversations with Bayern’s honorary president, Uli Hoeness, in recent months and it has been reported that when Vincent Kompany felt Florian was not convinced by Bayern’s pitch, Hans convinced his son to sit down with the Bayern brass for one more meeting. Florian agreed to do so but was not swayed. Liverpool remained his choice.

A move to Munich would have been understandable, even if it would have been a miserable sight for many Bundesliga fans. Staying in Germany a year before the World Cup and reprising the partnership he has with his friend Jamal Musiala in the national team as dual No 10s under Julian Nagelsmann would have had much to recommend it. Not to mention, as many in Germany have, the possibility of a lighter physical load playing for the most dominant team in the Bundesliga as opposed to the clatter and crunch of a debut season in the Premier League.

Wirtz is 5ft 10in but is relatively slight and, having taken 10 months and then plenty of match practice to come back to his best after an anterior cruciate ligament injury in 2022, there is the feeling that he will need to be looked after, protected and carefully managed.

This, along with his gamewinning ability, is why Alonso said in November 2023 that, while all his Leverkusen players had the remit to interpret their roles as they saw fit, “Flo gets a bit more freedom”. Wirtz has proved worth every bit of that extra licence to thrill, whether as a No 10, or drifting in from an inside-left position, or even nominally employed as a false 9. Whereas many in his role are there to feed a star striker, his ability to be decisive in any way needed, be it the last pass, the finish or a silky dribble to open up the opposition, means he is the star that the team should revolve around.

He has reached double figures in goals and assists in each of the past two seasons (10 and 12 respectively in the league alone last term) and turns up in the big matches. Wirtz adapted to his first season in the Champions League in 2024-25 as if he had always played there, scoring six times in nine starts before injury curtailed his involvement. It was his hat-trick against Werder Bremen in April 2024 that clinched Leverkusen’s first Bundesliga title.

He will be stepping into an existing, and winning, hierarchy at Liverpool. His social media rubbishing of reports he wanted Alexis Mac Allister’s No 10 shirt showed his respect for that. Yet it is not a leap to imagine him as an instant key piece. A front three of Wirtz, Mohamed Salah and Luis Díaz or Cody Gakpo would bring the champions in line with the amorphous attacking trios looking set to dominate the Champions League. Wirtz dropping into a 10 role to allow Salah plus one to create a de facto front two could work well, and relieve the Egyptian of some of his creative load.

When it comes to a big decision, the Wirtz family take their time. That was the case when he joined Leverkusen in January 2020. Indignant as Köln were – believing their near neighbours had reneged on a tacit agreement not to take one another’s players – they knew Wirtz’s departure was in the post when, as with this move, the player and his family spent time running down the clock before deciding to move 15 minutes up the road to the Bayarena.

When Wirtz takes his time to make a decision, it usually works out. When it’s time to take the field, he is far more speedy and decisive.

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