Florian Wirtz's Struggles at Liverpool: Time Running Out

Florian Wirtz arrived at Liverpool as the next great Anfield creator, a marquee signing expected to bend games to his will. A season and a bit later, the questions are getting louder, and the patience is thinning.

The club have invested heavily in the German, but the spark that lit up the Bundesliga has yet to properly catch fire on Merseyside at the start of 2026-27. Two full seasons was always going to be the rough time frame for him to prove he belongs at the heart of Liverpool’s future. He may not get that long.

Didi Hamann, speaking to GOAL in association with Betinia NJ, did not dance around the issue when asked what Wirtz needs from this campaign – and when talk of an exit could begin.

"He's got to start playing well. He has to start influencing the game," Hamann said.

Hamann’s criticism cuts to the core of Wirtz’s Liverpool problem. The 23-year-old was signed to be the main man, yet too often he drifts. “I think he's a player who floats,” Hamann explained, suggesting Wirtz has not yet earned the kind of dressing-room respect that allows a luxury playmaker to switch off without the ball.

You can carry that type of player, Hamann argued, but only if he constantly tilts matches in your favour.

“You've got to give him certain liberties and a certain freedom, that you've got players who win the ball back for him. And the players don't mind doing it if when he does get the ball 10 times, six, seven, eight times, something's going to happen. That's just not the case.”

The irony is that Wirtz is now doing plenty of defensive work. Perhaps too much.

“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’t influence the game going forward,” Hamann said. For the former Liverpool midfielder, the balance is all wrong. Wirtz is chasing, pressing, tracking – but not doing what he was bought for.

“He will only get the respect of the players when he starts influencing the game going forward. He's not there to win balls, he's there to set up goals and score goals.”

Last season, Hamann reckons, there were only “a handful of games” where Wirtz truly did that. For a player of his price tag and profile, that return is nowhere near enough.

The physicality of the Premier League is the familiar caveat. Many imports need time. Some never quite adjust. Hamann name-checked Juan Sebastian Veron, who arrived in England as one of the world’s finest midfielders but lasted just a season at Manchester United before heading back to Italy.

“Some just can't do it or don't want to do it,” Hamann said bluntly.

At first, Hamann himself preached patience with Wirtz. “The first two or three months, give him time. I said he's too good to fail.” But that stance shifted as the season dragged on without a real breakout.

“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 new season has not eased those concerns. Wirtz was substituted after 60 minutes in Liverpool’s opening league game, another outing that failed to properly catch light.

Hamann believes the next few weeks are pivotal.

“If he doesn't start influencing games in the next three or four weeks, I think by the time we have that international break, which is longer this year, 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’.”

The stakes are obvious. A player of Wirtz’s “magnitude” and “stature”, as Hamann put it, cannot simply coast through another season on the fringes of games.

“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.”

Where that solution lies is still part of the debate. Wirtz’s best position remains a live issue: is he a classic No.10, or a forward starting from the left and drifting infield?

Hamann, a Champions League winner with Liverpool, is not convinced that the positional argument can carry much weight anymore.

“I know everybody said how well he does in training and all this. And 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.”

Wirtz, he stresses, was not brought in to be a squad option or a tactical luxury. “He was bought to be the main man.”

Hamann accepts that the original plan may have been to use him centrally. “I think a year earlier, I said in the summer he sees him as a number 10.” But that role comes with brutal clarity: create or be replaced.

“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.”

Barcola’s arrival only sharpens the edge. Liverpool now have another high-upside attacker pushing for minutes on the left, exactly where some believe Wirtz might thrive. The competition is real, and the calendar is unforgiving.

For Wirtz, the equation is suddenly very simple. Start deciding games, or the club – and perhaps the player himself – may soon decide that the Premier League chapter of his career needs an early rewrite.