{"id":181423,"date":"2025-06-13T15:36:13","date_gmt":"2025-06-13T15:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/181423\/"},"modified":"2025-06-13T15:36:13","modified_gmt":"2025-06-13T15:36:13","slug":"why-florian-wirtz-really-turned-down-man-city-with-pep-guardiola-concern-liverpool-fc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/181423\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Florian Wirtz really turned down Man City – with Pep Guardiola concern – Liverpool FC"},"content":{"rendered":"

Florian Wirtz<\/a> turned down interest from a number of clubs to join Liverpool, including Man City<\/a>, rejecting their advances after a meeting with Pep Guardiola.<\/b><\/p>\n

Liverpool have agreed a \u00a3116 million deal to sign Wirtz from Bayer Leverkusen, following rival interest from Bayern Munich, Man City<\/a> and Real Madrid<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It is rightly seen as a coup for the Premier League<\/a> champions despite it breaking the British transfer record, and serves as a statement of intent ahead of a title defence in 2025\/26.<\/p>\n

For a long time it was expected that Wirtz would make the relatively short move from Leverkusen to Bayern, while Man City<\/a>\u2018s financial power suggested they would be second favourites to a deal.<\/p>\n

But the Times<\/a>\u2018 Paul Joyce has explained how concerns arising from Wirtz\u2019s meeting with Guardiola prompted him to distance himself from Man City<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Bayer<\/p>\n

\u201cSeveral sources, including those in Germany, have indicated that Wirtz enquired about how long Guardiola would remain in charge given his contract is due to expire in 2027,\u201d the Liverpool journalist wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cAccording to the German publication Bild, the Catalan was not emphatic and so it was Wirtz who turned down City, not the other way round.\u201d<\/p>\n

For their part, Man City<\/a> claimed the deal proved too costly to justify, judging the full outlay to be worth in the region of \u00a3250 million including transfer fee and wages.<\/p>\n

But that seems unlikely given their previous spending record, with Joyce using Erling Haaland\u2019s new contract \u2013 signed in January to tie him to a basic \u00a3500,000-a-week wages for nine-and-a-half years \u2013 as a conflicting argument.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile it is claimed that Bayern were \u201coverconfident\u201d in their dealings with Wirtz and his family and that \u201cthey did not speak to him properly until May 18.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Liverpool\u2019s breakthrough came five days later on May 23, long after they began the process in convincing him his future lied at Anfield rather than the Etihad, the Allianz Arena or the Bernabeu.<\/p>\n

\u201cSlot\u2019s sales pitch was arguably more straightforward. At Anfield, Wirtz could be the No. 10, or indeed play elsewhere given his versatility,\u201d Joyce continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was the added lure of working under a coach who had eked improvement from the elite stars Mohamed Salah<\/a> and Virgil van Dijk<\/a>, as well as those such as Ryan Gravenberch<\/a> who had a little more to prove.<\/p>\n

\u201cEngland represented a new challenge, a step outside Wirtz\u2019s comfort zone and, arguably, the best sporting project, something which has always taken precedence in his career above financial rewards.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Florian Wirtz turned down interest from a number of clubs to join Liverpool, including Man City, rejecting their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":181424,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4100],"tags":[94,763,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-181423","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-liverpool-fc","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}