Midway through last summer\u2019s transfer window, there was an air of frustration and disappointment for Bayern Munich when it became clear Florian Wirtz was choosing to join Liverpool from Bayer Leverkusen instead of the German Rekordmeister. Bayern then had to work through their contingency plans and ironically wound up signing Luis Diaz from Liverpool, who has enjoyed a fantastic start to life in Munich and the Bundesliga. The Colombian winger has already tallied 11 goals and 5 assists from a total of 17 appearances across all competitions. By stark contrast, Wirtz has tallied just 3 assists from a total of 16 appearances across all competitions at Liverpool and has yet to find the back of the net.<\/p>\n
By the evidence on display, Bayern seemingly got the best out of the situation from the summer with how good Diaz has been so far. His solid form has been all the more refreshing given that the club has been without Jamal Musiala in attack and Alphonso Davies in defense as they\u2019ve both been recovering from major injury problems. Additionally, Bayern have started the season with 17 matches unbeaten, but it\u2019s been far different for Wirtz with the defending Premier League champions. Arne Slot\u2019s side have already lost 5 times in the league, once in the Champions League, and they were recently knocked out of the Carabao Cup by Crystal Palace.<\/p>\n
Ahead of Germany\u2019s pair of World Cup qualifiers against Luxembourg and Slovakia for the November international break, Julian Nagelsmann was asked about just what\u2019s going on with Wirtz at Liverpool, and he feels it\u2019s a multi-faceted, complicated situation for the 22-year old playmaker. \u201cI always speak to Flo, regardless of his situation. It\u2019s a very complex and difficult situation when you look at his club. Last year they won the Premier League and played very attractive football. This year a few players left them, and they invested a lot of money on new players,\u201d he explained (via @iMiaSanMia<\/a>).<\/p>\n Liverpool tragically lost Diogo Jota when a car crash killed him and his brother Andr\u00e9 Silva in July, which has certainly had an unfathomable impact at the club and the fan base. In addition to the devastating loss, Liverpool saw all of Diaz, Darwin Nunez, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Harvey Elliot, and Jarell Quansah. They did, however, break the bank for their incoming players, having brought in Alexander Isak, Hugo Ekitike, Jeremie Frimpong, Milos Kerkez, Giorgi Mamardashvili and Giovanni Leoni in addition to Wirt, having spent over 500-million euros to do so.<\/p>\n For Nagelsmann, he feels all of the attacking players just having quite clicked yet and Wirtz is being highlighted because of his 130-million euros+ transfer fee. \u201cThe entire mix is very complex – each of the 5 attacking players wants to be the \u2018star player\u2019, this situation doesn\u2019t make it easy for Flo – because the entire club is not as stable as they were last season. I watched the game against [Manchester] City and they were the worse team over 90 minutes. It\u2019s not easy for Flo to put his mark in such a situation. We can see that a lot of players struggle when they move to another club where there have been many changes. In the end I can\u2019t influence his performances at Liverpool,\u201d the Germany manager stressed.<\/p>\n One statistic working in Wirtz\u2019s favor when push comes to shove with Liverpool\u2019s form under the microscope is the fact that he\u2019s created 21 chances across all competitions, yet he still only has the trio of assists. That stat line suggests that Wirtz\u2019a fellow Liverpool attackers are letting him down just a bit too much when he\u2019s giving opportunities, perhaps waning in confidence in pulling the trigger himself the longer he\u2019s gone at Liverpool without scoring.<\/p>\n Regardless of what his club form is like, Nagelsmann is still fully focused on getting the best out of Wirtz for the German national team. \u201cI can only influence what he does here. I think he made steps in the right direction in October. We all know what he can do, it\u2019s normal to have a dip in form. We\u2019ll help and support him to keep a clear head,\u201d he said, recognizing that he\u2019s been progressively getting better with his Merseyside contingent. It\u2019s only a matter of time before Liverpool see the real, fully-flowing (no pun intended) Florian Wirtz.<\/p>\n Bayern Munich sputtered into the international break with a 2-2 draw against Union Berlin.<\/p>\n While it was tough watch at times, there is no reason to panic\u2026right? Right?<\/p>\n Right \u2014 and let\u2019s talk about why, plus more on the next edition of the Bavarian Podcast Works Show:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Midway through last summer\u2019s transfer window, there was an air of frustration and disappointment for Bayern Munich when…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":564409,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[2000,299,129072,1824],"class_list":{"0":"post-564408","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-german-national-team-and-international-soccer","11":"tag-germany"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115533242885590495","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564408","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=564408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/564409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=564408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=564408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=564408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}