Florian Wirtz's Struggles at Liverpool: Time Running Out

Liverpool’s patience with Florian Wirtz is starting to fray. The club made a major investment to bring in one of Europe’s most coveted talents, but as the 2026-27 season stutters into life, the German playmaker is still searching for a spark. Two seasons was always likely to be the informal audition window. Right now, even that feels generous.

Dietmar Hamann, speaking to GOAL in association with Betinia NJ, did not bother dressing it up. Asked what Wirtz needs from this campaign and when exit noise might start to build, he cut straight to the point: Wirtz has to start playing well. He has to start influencing games.

Hamann painted the picture of a player drifting through matches rather than grabbing them. A “floater”, as he put it. Not yet commanding the kind of respect in the dressing room that allows a luxury creator to ease off without the ball because teammates know he will punish opponents when it counts. The problem? When Wirtz receives the ball 10 times, Hamann says, six, seven or eight decisive actions are simply not coming. Not at Liverpool. Not yet.

Instead, the 23-year-old has been chasing back, working furiously in reverse. Too much, in Hamann’s eyes. A sign of a player trying to compensate, trying to prove he cares, because he knows he is not shaping games in the final third as he was signed to do. The balance is wrong. Wirtz is not in this team to win tackles; he is there to create and to score.

Hamann reckons only a handful of games last season truly showed that version of Wirtz. For a player of his price tag and profile, that is nowhere near enough. The Premier League’s physical demands are an easy explanation, and Hamann acknowledged that many stars have needed time to adapt. Some never really did. He pointed to Juan Sebastian Veron, who arrived as one of the world’s finest midfielders and lasted just a season before returning to Italy. Some players cannot make it work. Some simply decide they do not want to.

Early on, Hamann preached patience. Give him two or three months. Too good to fail. But as the season rolled past Christmas without a sustained surge in form, his stance shifted. The longer the struggles continued, the more he doubted Wirtz would truly crack English football. Expectations did not soften; they hardened.

This season has started in the same uneasy rhythm. Wirtz was substituted again after 60 minutes in Liverpool’s opener. Hamann sees a clock ticking. If the German does not start dictating games over the next three or four weeks, the upcoming international break – longer than usual this year – could become a flashpoint. That is when he expects heavy debate: back pages full of questions over whether Liverpool were right to sign him, and perhaps Wirtz himself wondering if this move suits him at all.

For Hamann, something will have to give. A player of Wirtz’s stature and cost cannot drift through a second straight season. If the pattern does not change, a solution may be needed as early as the winter window.

The tactical debate around Wirtz only adds another layer. Is he a classic No.10, pulling strings between the lines? Or is he better starting from the left, drifting inside onto his stronger foot and attacking space? Liverpool have wrestled with that question without finding a definitive answer.

Hamann is unconvinced that the positional argument should carry too much weight. Wirtz was bought to be the main man, the creative hub. The German recalled saying a year earlier that the manager saw him as a No.10. That role comes with clear demands: create chances, score goals, decide matches. If a No.10 is not doing that, someone else has to play.

That pressure only intensifies with Bradley Barcola arriving to compete for attacking minutes. The margin for indulgence shrinks quickly when a squad is stacked with alternatives. England can be a brutal environment for players who do not immediately justify their billing.

Liverpool did not sign Wirtz to be a talking point. They signed him to be a difference-maker. The question now is simple: how long can a club with title ambitions wait for their marquee creator to finally take control of the stage?