Florian Wirtz turned down interest from a number of clubs to join Liverpool, including Man City, rejecting their advances after a meeting with Pep Guardiola.
Liverpool have agreed a £116 million deal to sign Wirtz from Bayer Leverkusen, following rival interest from Bayern Munich, Man City and Real Madrid.
It is rightly seen as a coup for the Premier League champions despite it breaking the British transfer record, and serves as a statement of intent ahead of a title defence in 2025/26.
For a long time it was expected that Wirtz would make the relatively short move from Leverkusen to Bayern, while Man City‘s financial power suggested they would be second favourites to a deal.
But the Times‘ Paul Joyce has explained how concerns arising from Wirtz’s meeting with Guardiola prompted him to distance himself from Man City.
“Several 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,” the Liverpool journalist wrote.
“According to the German publication Bild, the Catalan was not emphatic and so it was Wirtz who turned down City, not the other way round.”
For their part, Man City claimed the deal proved too costly to justify, judging the full outlay to be worth in the region of £250 million including transfer fee and wages.
But that seems unlikely given their previous spending record, with Joyce using Erling Haaland’s new contract – signed in January to tie him to a basic £500,000-a-week wages for nine-and-a-half years – as a conflicting argument.
Meanwhile it is claimed that Bayern were “overconfident” in their dealings with Wirtz and his family and that “they did not speak to him properly until May 18.”
Liverpool’s 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.
“Slot’s sales pitch was arguably more straightforward. At Anfield, Wirtz could be the No. 10, or indeed play elsewhere given his versatility,” Joyce continued.
“There was the added lure of working under a coach who had eked improvement from the elite stars Mohamed Salah and Virgil van Dijk, as well as those such as Ryan Gravenberch who had a little more to prove.
“England represented a new challenge, a step outside Wirtz’s comfort zone and, arguably, the best sporting project, something which has always taken precedence in his career above financial rewards.”
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