Should Liverpool Keep Backing Wirtz? The Answer to His Growth Still Hides Beneath the Dip

Before Wirtz moved to Liverpool, several top coaches gave almost identical verdicts: difficult to mark, complete player, world-class, loves the game, technically refined, easygoing personality, mentally mature, an important asset to the squad, and one of the best players of today.

The vision for him was to become the ideal playmaker: able to find space between the lines off the ball, and unlock defenses with it at his feet. He can dribble, play through balls, create easy scoring chances, and also strike from distance; and unlike the traditional luxury No.10, he is willing to put in the work out of possession.

That is why Liverpool last summer broke their club transfer record to sign the player, who had never played in the Premier League, for €117.5 million ($133 million). Given his all-round game, his floor was extremely high: even if the team functioned poorly, he could still contribute in certain phases.

The ceiling was just as remarkable. At 20, he was already the Bundesliga's best player. He could become not just the Premier League's best, but the world's best. In any case, putting Wirtz in the starting lineup seemed to help the team win.

But the reality is that soon after he arrived in England, Liverpool started losing: they actually lost 12 games, compared to only four the previous season. It was the club's most loss-heavy Premier League season in over a decade. They went from 84 points and the title to 24 points fewer the following season. By the end of last season, they were closer in points to the relegation zone than to the title.

Who else to blame besides the man who had only five goals and three assists since joining from Bayer Leverkusen? First, coach Slot was sacked; then Salah suddenly declined, but Liverpool agreed to terminate his contract.

Now this season, with the attack stuttering, Wirtz has only one assist, and his struggles have become the simplest explanation for Liverpool's inexplicable decline. Fans are split, club legends want him dropped, and transfer rumors swirl.

Wirtz looks like a flop, but should Liverpool really give up on him?

Flick and Alonso both called him all-round, but what does that mean? How did he play at Leverkusen? Who is he most like?

Looking back at the Stats Perform database, covering every season in Europe's top five leagues since around 2010, there have been 18 instances where a player simultaneously achieved, per 90 minutes: at least 80 touches; at least 80% pass completion; at least 2 shots attempted; at least 2 chances created; at least 7 passes into the penalty area; and at least 6 touches in the box.

Why these numbers? They point to a specific type of player: consistently on the ball, creating chances, shooting, touching the ball near the goal, while not losing it frequently. Many players have high touches and control but don't get close to goal to attack; many shoot and create a lot but don't touch the ball often and give it away. Combining both is extremely rare and extremely valuable. The list: Messi four times at Barcelona; Neymar twice at PSG; Olise twice at Bayern; David Silva once at Man City; Desire Doue once at PSG; Hazard once at Chelsea; De Bruyne once at Man City; Yamal once at Barcelona; Insigne once at Napoli; Dembele once at PSG; Cherki once at Man City.

If the playing-time threshold is raised to 2,000 minutes in a season, the list narrows to Messi, Olise, Insigne, Hazard, Yamal's seasons, plus Wirtz's final two seasons at Leverkusen. If we also add at least 2 successful dribbles per game, Insigne drops from the high-minutes list, and Silva and De Bruyne disappear from the low-threshold list.

The conclusion: since around 2010, only five players in the world's best leagues have shouldered such a high-touch, high-minute, all-round attacking load: Messi, Yamal, Hazard, Olise, and Wirtz—twice, and both before his 22nd birthday, for a German club with financial resources comparable to Crystal Palace's.

Now look at the same data. Here are Wirtz's per-90 numbers from his last two Bundesliga seasons compared to his Premier League time so far. Interestingly, he meets almost all the arbitrary benchmarks, but nearly everything has declined: fewer shots, fewer chances created, fewer passes into the box, fewer dribbles. The biggest drop is in touches, nearly 20 fewer per game, which explains the other declines.

Here is his touch heat map at Liverpool so far. The biggest difference between the two leagues is in the attacking third: at Leverkusen he had 50 per game, at Liverpool 35. More specifically, he almost never touches the ball in the central area of the attacking third.

Tacticians call the area extending outward from the top of the penalty box in the middle “Zone 14.” Modern football history can almost be explained as teams first realizing the importance of that zone—the second striker in 4-4-2 was replaced by an attacking midfielder dropping into Zone 14; then teams did everything to stop the ball from entering Zone 14—high pressing, emphasis on half-spaces, even set pieces, all replacing the traditional playmaker.

Wirtz got most of his touches at Leverkusen in the left half-space, and at Liverpool too, but in the Bundesliga he more often entered the valuable Zone 14: 19 touches per 90, compared to only 14 at Liverpool so far. This might explain his biggest problem: lack of creativity.

In his last two Bundesliga seasons, his shots produced 0.29 xG per game; in England that has dropped to 0.25. He has only scored five goals but has produced 7.7 xG. In his final two seasons in Germany, he scored 18 non-penalty goals from 15 xG. Getting high-quality shooting chances hasn't been a problem in England, but finishing them is, though there's no reason to think that will persist.

More precisely, the ability to create high-quality chances has not carried over from Leverkusen to Liverpool. In his last two German seasons, he produced 0.37 xA per 90, tied for the league's best among players with at least 3,000 minutes; that number would have ranked second in the Premier League last season. However, since joining the Premier League, over more than a season, he has only 0.18 xA per 90, ranking just 18th among players with at least 2,000 minutes.

While Wirtz has not yet become the potential Ballon d'Or winner that his record transfer fee and previous performances suggested, it doesn't mean he has been consistently bad. Since last season started, only seven players in England with at least 2,000 minutes have attempted and created at least 2 shots per 90: Cherki, Bruno Fernandes, Saka, Foden, Stach, Szoboszlai, and Wirtz. Only six players have more touches in the box, only 10 have completed more dribbles, and he ranks in the top 20 for passes into the box.

The positive amid the slump: even without goals and assists, he still does other things that help win games: advancing the ball, finding space, creating shots. In particular, his ability to find space between the lines was a superpower in the Bundesliga and has already translated to the Premier League. According to Gradient Sports stats, he is tied for third in the league with 33 receptions that break defensive lines, with no teammate above 18. He has been vital to Liverpool's ball progression. But how much is that worth?

The data application Futi's player rating examines everything a player does on the pitch, including receptions, calculates how much it increases scoring chances and reduces conceding chances, then adjusts for whether he starts, opponent, and the difference in performance with and without him on the pitch, finally converting to a 0-100 rating, with 50 being league average.

Last season—even with only 0.3 goals+assists per 90, a big drop from his 0.68 at Leverkusen—Wirtz had a Futi rating of 60. That ranked seventh among central attacking midfielders in the Premier League, behind only Cherki, Bruno Fernandes, Tijani Reijnders, Cole Palmer, Enzo Fernandez, and Mikkel Damsgaard. This season? Still 60.

Of course, you don't break the British transfer record for the seventh-best central attacking midfielder in the league; but you don't break it based on just one season either. You break it because of all his peak years. Wirtz was only 22 last season, and 23 this season, with his peak perhaps not even starting until next year.

Of course, we've seen other attacking midfielders dominate the Premier League before age 24. Dele Alli was a Tottenham star as a teenager; Coutinho joined Liverpool at 20 and was immediately excellent; Cesc Fabregas became Arsenal captain at 21; Cherki might be the league's best player right now, and is a few months younger than Wirtz. The difference is that Cherki hasn't yet carried a full high-intensity workload at Man City, and joined a more stable, more talented team; all the others did it in a Premier League where competition was far less intense than now.

Post-pandemic, the financial advantages of Premier League clubs have reached escape velocity: personnel spending far exceeds that of other European leagues, and that has shown on the pitch in recent seasons. According to Pitch Rank estimates—which gauge team strength by comparing odds in European competitions—currently 18 Premier League teams rank in the world's top 50, compared to just six from the Bundesliga.

Wirtz's dominance in Germany was real, but also amplified by a domestic league whose quality has been steadily declining over the past five years. Liverpool knows this, but also knows that if you account for age, the drop-off from moving to a tougher league could be offset by the upswing most players experience between 24 and 28, their peak years.

Recently, the captain of the defending champions, Odegaard, who plays the same position as Wirtz, is an example. In his first two seasons at Arsenal, Odegaard was a decent player—did many small things but struggled to create goals and assists. In the third year he transformed into a superstar and was named in the Premier League Team of the Year. Another top attacking midfielder, the reigning Player of the Year Bruno Fernandes, didn't leave the Portuguese league until he was 25.

Liverpool is clearly in transition: a new coach, a new sporting director soon to arrive, an unbalanced squad, a mix of young, peak, and post-peak players. They are not aiming to win everything now, but to win everything in a few years.

However one reads Wirtz's first year-plus in England, his transformation into a star in Germany did happen—doing things only a few modern players have done, and across multiple seasons. It's possible it will never happen in the Premier League—Leverkusen's situation was uniquely perfect, and the space and time England gives him don't match his skill set. But conversely, that's exactly why Liverpool hasn't given up and shouldn't. This team is building for the future, and in a few years, Wirtz could still be one of the Premier League's best players.