Beyond the obvious faith they have in his ability that led them to invest an extraordinary fee of £116m, there is a precedent for Liverpool that helps convince them that Florian Wirtz will become the team’s most important player.
Beyond the obvious faith they have in his ability that led them to invest an extraordinary fee of £116m, there is a precedent for Liverpool that helps convince them that Florian Wirtz will become the team’s most important player.
That is what happened at Tottenham Hotspur with Luka Modric under the eye of Michael Edwards, who is now FSG’s chief executive of football and the ultimate power broker at the club. It is a comparison Edwards himself has made in private.
Edwards was not at Tottenham when Modric signed in April 2008 – he arrived more than a year later, eventually following Harry Redknapp who he had worked under at Portsmouth where he was an analyst.
But Edwards soon became a champion of Modric’s ability as detailed in Ian Graham’s book, How To Win The Premier League. Graham is a close associate of Edwards, and Liverpool’s former head of research. But, before that, they also worked together at Spurs, and Graham wrote: “One player who caused a difference of opinion was Luka Modric. According to our system he was a perfectly good young attacking midfielder, which was out of step with Eddy’s [Edwards] opinion that he was by far the best player in the squad.
“When ever-greater offers for Modric’s services came in from Europe, our opinion was Spurs should certainly consider selling if there was a reasonable replacement available. Eddy did not agree with that advice.”
In fairness to Graham, the “data models” and analysis used back then were far less sophisticated than they are now but it was also a lesson learnt in that the good old-fashioned “eye test” – forming an opinion on a player by watching him – should not be dismissed. Plus, certain players, and certain types of players, need to be given time.
Edwards was Spurs’ head-of-performance analysis and Modric had undoubtedly struggled since his £16.5m move from Dinamo Zagreb – signed by sporting director Damien Comolli who would later take Edwards to Liverpool – and was initially regarded as lightweight, not able to deal with the physical demands of the Premier League and had also been hampered by a knee injury.
The rest, as they say, is history.
“Looking back and knowing now what was missing from those early models, Eddy was right and we were wrong,” Graham writes.
“Modric’s dribbling and passing looked good, but not world class. Eddy could see, watching every game in detail on video, that Modric passed, received and dribbled in very tight spaces, and often relieved pressure for his team. These were aspects that were difficult to glean from the data: at that time they were not directly collected.”
In fact, Graham says, the experience with Modric became “our template for understanding players”. The data they used would be “the starting point for our evaluation of a player”, with Edwards then coming in to give his own verdict. “For the most part, there was good agreement between the model and Eddy’s view but in special cases, like Modric, Eddy would consider a player to be better or worse than the model suggested,” Graham writes.
Edwards drove the Wirtz signing, and beyond the similarities in their style of play – Modric has always played a bit deeper – there are the physical similarities.
Indeed, Modric’s former Spurs’ team-mate Dimitar Berbatov who, like Wirtz, came to the Premier League from Bayer Leverkusen, said in a podcast: “Someone can argue that his [Wirtz’s] physique is not that great for the Premier League. But then you can easily see the great players of his position, like Modric, the same build. Modric. F------ monster. It’s unbelievable, so give him time. I think he’s going to be unbelievable for Liverpool.”
Wirtz is a little taller and a bit heavier, but it must also be remembered that even in the 20 years since Modric burst on the scene footballers have become bigger athletes.
Interestingly, before the recent 2-1 win away to Spurs – with Wirtz achieving his first assist in a much-anticipated link-up with Alexander Isak – Arne Slot revealed that Wirtz, and others, have gained muscle from extra work in the gym to deal with the demands of the Premier League. Wirtz has put on 2.5kg. It is already making a difference, as is his acclimatation to the pace of the league.
It also may have only been the league’s whipping boys, Wolverhampton Wanderers, who were beaten at Anfield last weekend, but we may look back at that game in years to come as a significant one in Wirtz’s career.
The 22-year scored his first goal since arriving in English football, in his 23rd game, and started to show signs that he can be Liverpool’s playmaker and co-ordinate their attack in the way he did for Leverkusen, which also led to interest in him from Manchester City and Bayern Munich last summer.
Both of those clubs claim to have walked away because the deal became too expensive – and right now the £34m City spent on Rayan Cherki looks far greater value – although the claims from Liverpool were that Wirtz chose them and that is why the others backed off.
Liverpool face Leeds at Anfield on New Year’s Day and Wirtz will hope to be fit and build on his Wolves performance. It was also against Leeds, at Elland Road at the beginning of December after a dramatic 3-3 draw, that Mohamed Salah delivered his outburst.
What was clear then, and remains so despite Salah playing for Liverpool since, is that there is a transition taking place: the team is moving away from being built around the 33-year-old Egyptian and towards being constructed around Wirtz and an axis between him and Isak, the club’s other £100m-plus summer signing who is, unfortunately, out with a leg break sustained in scoring that goal against Tottenham.
The disappointment for Liverpool is that Wirtz and Isak cannot hone that connection at a time when Salah is away at the Africa Cup of Nations. If it had clicked over these weeks, where would that leave Salah?
The development will be down to Slot on the training pitches. The Liverpool head coach is one who likes to work with players and wants attacking football. He is also not afraid of change – witness what happened at Feyenoord where there was an annual turnover of players. For example, before one campaign the club sold seven of his starting XI and he lost three loanees. In came no fewer than 17 players.
Obviously that will not happen at Liverpool, but last summer did feel like one of huge upheaval and a move away from the side that won the league title, under Slot, but still essentially had Jürgen Klopp’s imprint on it.
Suffice to say Liverpool regard the turnover of the last window as a one-off, but also that, evidently, and rather like Wirtz’s Premier League career so far, they are a work in progress. But also one where there is faith that it will succeed.
Category: General Sports
