Florian Wirtz and the five paths Liverpool didn't take
A year on from his £116m move, Wirtz's stop-start Liverpool career invites a look at the attacking midfielders the club considered instead, and at how little any of them prove the rival case.
Florian Wirtz is still searching for his first Premier League goal this season, and little about his £116m transfer from Bayer Leverkusen in the summer of 2025 has gone to plan since.
Last season he managed only five league goals, the first of them arriving after Christmas. The appointment of Andoni Iraola in place of Arne Slot has not yet changed that pattern.
The same week captures the whole problem
The Guardian's Andy Hunter and Andy Brassell point to a single week as a snapshot of Wirtz's Liverpool career so far. In the Champions League win over Lask, he was involved everywhere, finding space between and behind the Austrian side's defensive lines and driving a dominant performance.
Days earlier against Manchester City, with Iraola missing Alexander Isak, Cody Gakpo and Dominik Szoboszlai, Wirtz faded out of the contest. Hunter and Brassell describe him as ineffective and wasteful as Liverpool chased the game at 0-1, eventually withdrawn.
Rayan Cherki, a far cheaper option Liverpool had considered and then rejected, scored the goal that sealed City's win that day, according to the Guardian's account.
Five names Liverpool weighed up instead
Planet Football's Samuel Bannister has revisited the other attacking midfielders in the frame before Liverpool committed to Wirtz, and none offers a clean verdict that Liverpool chose wrongly.
Morgan Gibbs-White was tracked by Liverpool for most of the second half of the 2024-25 season, Bannister reports, but Tottenham came closer to signing him before Nottingham Forest secured him on a new contract. Gibbs-White improved his output again last season, scoring 15 league goals in a difficult campaign for Forest.
Matheus Cunha moved to Manchester United instead. Bannister cites a Daily Mail report from the time stating Liverpool considered themselves ‘well stocked’ in his position and were ‘not 100 per cent convinced about where and how he would fit into the squad’ while focused on Wirtz. Cunha scored 10 league goals in his first United season but never settled into one fixed role, splitting time between left wing and centre-forward.
Xavi Simons, scouted by Liverpool late in the 2024-25 season according to some reports cited by Bannister, ended up at Tottenham from RB Leipzig instead. His transition to England has been harder than Wirtz's: only two Premier League goals in his debut season there.
Rodrygo was floated by the Spanish outlet Sport as a fallback option rather than a direct alternative to Wirtz. Bannister notes Liverpool went on to sell Luis Diaz to Bayern Munich that summer and that Mohamed Salah struggled in his final Liverpool season, which strengthens the case that a forward of Rodrygo's level might have been useful. But Rodrygo scored just once in 19 La Liga appearances before suffering an ACL injury he is still recovering from.
Eberechi Eze, fresh off Crystal Palace's FA Cup win in 2024-25, was also mentioned as a Liverpool target by the Independent, Bannister notes, though the outcome of that interest is not detailed.
Why none of the alternatives settles the argument
Taken together, the alternatives make an uneven case against Wirtz rather than a damning one. Gibbs-White's rise at Forest is the strongest individual data point in favour of a different choice, but he was never a direct swap for Wirtz's profile as a central creator.
Cunha and Simons have had their own adaptation problems in England, which suggests the Premier League's demands on Bundesliga and Championship-calibre attacking talent are not unique to Wirtz. Rodrygo's injury-hit season removes him from the comparison entirely.
Bannister also highlights Dominik Szoboszlai's season as indirect evidence for Liverpool's thinking: he operated deeper than before but still in territory similar to Wirtz's, and was one of Liverpool's better performers last season regardless.
The Guardian's reporting suggests the more pressing question is not whether Liverpool picked the wrong name in 2025, but why a player capable of the performance he produced against Lask has not yet reproduced it consistently in matches that matter more, with Cherki's winner against City standing as an uncomfortable reminder of the margins involved.