{"id":400763,"date":"2025-09-05T19:35:16","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T19:35:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/400763\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T19:35:16","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T19:35:16","slug":"florian-wirtz-almost-invisible-as-conor-bradley-gets-early-world-cup-boost-liverpool-fc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/400763\/","title":{"rendered":"Florian Wirtz “almost invisible” as Conor Bradley gets early World Cup boost – Liverpool FC"},"content":{"rendered":"

Florian Wirtz<\/a> endured a difficult night as Germany lost an away World Cup qualifier for the first time in their history \u2013 with Conor Bradley<\/a> benefiting.<\/b><\/p>\n

Germany suffered their first-ever loss in an away World Cup qualifier on Thursday night as they fell to a 2-0 defeat to Slovakia.<\/p>\n

Wirtz started in his usual left-sided role for Julian Nagelsmann and played the full 90 minutes as David Hancko and David Strelec got the goals for the hosts.<\/p>\n

As the two most expensive German players in this summer\u2019s transfer window, there were high expectations around Wirtz and new Newcastle<\/a> striker Nick Woltemade.<\/p>\n

But BILD<\/a> described the pair as \u201calmost invisible\u201d on a night of \u201chistoric embarrassment\u201d for the national team.<\/p>\n

\"MUNICH,<\/p>\n

Liverpool\u2019s No. 7 was blamed for losing possession before Hancko opened the scoring in the first half, though he was far from his country\u2019s worst performer.<\/p>\n

In fact, per FotMob<\/a>, Wirtz created more chances than any other player (four), with BuliNews<\/a> rating him a team-high five-out-of-10 as he was \u201cGermany\u2019s only real creative spark.\u201d<\/p>\n

However it is clear that no player truly stood out, with Nagelsmann left pondering whether he needs to focus less on star power and more on effort.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to hear anything more about quality. It\u2019s enough for me if we have the passion,\u201d he said, per kicker<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cPerhaps we need to rely on less quality and instead on players who give it their all.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Conor<\/p>\n

Germany\u2019s defeat comes at the first round of qualifiers for the 2026 World Cup and leaves them bottom of Group A ahead of their clash with Northern Ireland on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Provided they both start, that game will pit two Liverpool teammates directly against each other: Wirtz on the left wing and Bradley as an attacking right wing-back.<\/p>\n

While Germany stuttered to an unlikely loss on Thursday, Northern Ireland made light work of Luxembourg to begin the qualifying stage at the top of their group.<\/p>\n

Bradley started and played 76 minutes, with manager Michael O\u2019Neill keen to manage his fitness, exiting the pitch with his country already 3-1 up.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

It was the right-back\u2019s cross which was cleared into the path of Shea Charles to make it 2-1 shortly after half-time, while FotMob<\/a> show that he contested more duels than any other player \u2013 winning six of his 12, including three tackles.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to be another difficult game but looking forward to it,\u201d Bradley told BBC Sport NI<\/a> of the upcoming clash with Germany.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Florian and I] had a few jokes before we went away, not WhatsApps yet but I\u2019ll have to get into him tomorrow and tell him to take it easy on us!<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s an unbelievable player. I\u2019ve seen that from the few weeks we\u2019ve had together in pre-season, and we\u2019ll have to keep him quiet Sunday night.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Florian Wirtz endured a difficult night as Germany lost an away World Cup qualifier for the first time…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400764,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[763,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-400763","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-liverpool-fc","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400763","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=400763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}