Florian Wirtz has drawn sharp commentary since his move to Liverpool, but his father Hans has pushed back, arguing the player is progressing as expected. Wirtz played a role in the Community Shield by teeing up Hugo Ekitik\u00e9 on an otherwise muted debut and created two goals against Eintracht Frankfurt in the Champions League.<\/p>\n
Criticism has focused on his physicality in the Premier League as well as his output. After Liverpool’s 3\u20130 defeat to Manchester City last weekend, Gary Neville said: \u201cWirtz is a problem,\u201d and \u201cI thought Wirtz looked like a little boy. That can\u2019t be the case.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hans Wirtz responded calmly. \u201cI only take the criticism from the former internationals in passing,\u201d he told K\u00f6lner Stadt-Anzeiger. \u201cFlorian is a young man who wants to prove himself in a new environment. Less than a third of the season has been played.\u201d He added: \u201cSo far, everything is going as expected; it\u2019s a completely normal settling-in process, entirely independent of any transfer fee.\u201d Hans, who acts as one of his son\u2019s agents alongside his wife Karin Gro\u00df, also urged a closer look at the underlying figures. \u201cAnd: If you look at the statistics more closely, you can see that Florian\u2019s stats regarding his involvement in the game are already quite good; only assists and goals are still pending.\u201d<\/p>\n
Germany boss Julian Nagelsmann made a related point: \u201cMaybe Liverpool could also help him out by scoring some of the chances he creates.\u201d Those who watched Wirtz develop at Bayer Leverkusen offer a tactical explanation. Sporting director Simon Rolfes recalled Wirtz\u2019s role as a combination player and said: \u201cFor all his individual class, Flo is above all one thing: a total team player,\u201d and \u201cFlo thrives on combination play, but at the moment Liverpool haven\u2019t quite gelled as a team. That makes things more difficult for Flo, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Statistics underline the change: at Leverkusen Wirtz averaged 80.3 touches per game and 45.1 touches in the attacking third; in the 2025\u201326 Premier League he averages 57.7 total touches and 27.3 in the attacking third per 90, with reductions across progressive passes, dribbles and passes received. The 22-year-old\u2019s adaptation, his father says, remains a work in progress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hans Wirtz says Florian’s adaptation is normal; statistics show reduced touches and chance creation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4503,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[230,175,172],"tags":[1081,983,1162],"class_list":["post-4504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analytics-stats","category-liverpool","category-epl","tag-adaptation","tag-agents","tag-analytics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4504","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=4504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}