Jurgen Klopp has publicly backed Florian Wirtz to emerge as one of the standout players at the 2026 World Cup after a testing first season at Liverpool. Wirtz struggled to settle in a new league and country and endured intense scrutiny, including being branded a “little boy” by Gary Neville after a heavy defeat to Manchester City. Still, he is not viewed as the club’s poorest summer signing of 2025; that label has been reserved for Isak.<\/p>\n
The Germany international finished the season with 17 goals and assists across all competitions for the Reds. Klopp believes the experience will serve Wirtz well and that the player can hit a higher level with Germany this summer. Wirtz started throughout qualifying, primarily on the left wing, and recently scored twice and assisted twice in a friendly victory over Switzerland.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope Flo Wirtz will have a fantastic, fantastic World Cup,\u201d Klopp told BBC Sport. \u201cI think he has everything you need to be a standout player. I don\u2019t want to put any pressure on the boy. I really think he showed already how good he can be in a difficult season.\u201d<\/p>\n
German supporters will hope Wirtz can lift his game as the four-time champions look to recover from the shock group-stage eliminations of 2018 and 2022. Liverpool are likely to supply a significant contingent to the tournament in North America: the club could have 12 players called up, including Wirtz. Squad numbers were reduced by injury and selection issues; Hugo Ekitik\u00e9 is ruled out until 2027 with an Achilles injury and Curtis Jones is unlikely to be selected by England.<\/p>\n
Klopp reflected on the personal connections that many former Liverpool players will bring to the competition. \u201cI hope that Andy Robertson and Alisson Becker can enjoy that when they meet each other [for Scotland vs. Brazil]. Can you imagine that you play together for such a long time and Scotland qualifies first time, I don\u2019t know since when, for the World Cup, and you meet each other, your friends, in a game like that? I mean, that must be one of the happiest moments in your life.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wish Virgil [van Dijk] will have a great tournament. I really wish for Mo [Salah] that he will have a great tournament. I honestly wish that Sadio [Man\u00e9] will have a great tournament. [Alexis Mac Allister], if he won, if they win it again. It was so nice to see him with a medal around his neck.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo many [of my] former players are part of the World Cup, which is really, really nice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those former Liverpool players named in connection with the tournament include Alisson Becker (Brazil), Wataru Endo (Japan), Virgil van Dijk (Netherlands), Cody Gakpo (Netherlands), Jeremie Frimpong (Netherlands), Ryan Gravenberch (Netherlands), Ibrahima Konat\u00e9 (France), Florian Wirtz (Germany), Alexander Isak (Sweden), Alexis Mac Allister (Argentina) and Mohamed Salah (Egypt).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Klopp predicts Florian Wirtz can be a World Cup standout after a testing first season at Liverpool..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13383,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[961,175],"tags":[1081,195,1616],"class_list":["post-13384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","category-liverpool","tag-adaptation","tag-alexander-isak","tag-world-cup-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13384\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}