Liverpool have completed the signing of Florian Wirtz in a €136.3million (£116m) transfer from Bayer Leverkusen.
Wirtz has signed a five-year deal with Liverpool. The transfer represents a club record fee for Liverpool and a potential British record transfer, should the add-ons be activated.
As part of this summer’s transfer coverage on The Athletic, in addition to breaking news, tactical analysis and in-depth reads, our Transfers TLDR series (you can read them all here) will bring you a quick guide to each of the key deals.
Give me their back story in 100 words…
Wirtz is one of the brightest talents to come out of Germany. The Bundesliga player of the season for Bayer Leverkusen’s invincible 2023-24 campaign started out at Koln’s academy in 2010, having grown up in Pulheim, a town located eight miles (13km) from the city.
Wirtz spent a decade there before joining Leverkusen in 2020. He made his debut the same year, becoming the youngest Bundesliga player in history at the time. A few weeks later, he became the division’s youngest ever goalscorer, too. In March 2022, he tore his anterior cruciate ligament, which meant he missed out on selection for the World Cup but he was able to represent Germany last summer at Euro 2024. He has nine siblings and is not the only footballer in the family; his sister Juliane Wirtz plays for Werder Bremen.
Caoimhe O’Neill
(FRANK MOLTER/AFP via Getty Images)
What should and shouldn’t I expect to see?
Xabi Alonso soon figured out that the key to Wirtz is no key at all, just unlock the gate and let him bolt. His never-ending work rate means he will always be looking to find space, pick up the ball on the half-turn and make something happen for himself or a team-mate.
Expect crisp shots into the corner of the net as well as deft assists. He will get stuck in, but do not expect him to win every battle.
Caoimhe O’Neill
How will they fit tactically?
As a No 10, Wirtz plays the position in a highly modern way. He’s energetic and hard-working, never staying still, but his attributes are still such that they are best served at the centre of a team’s attacking system. At his most influential for Leverkusen, he reaches 80, 90 or 100 touches per game, so that’s the level of involvement that Liverpool will have to try to replicate.
Wirtz has a tendency to drift towards the left and, when playing against a low block, will like to receive possession on that side of the penalty box — Eden Hazard used to have that habit in his prime at Chelsea — but he is a central player who is dampened any time he is pushed to the periphery.
Seb Stafford-Bloor
What’s their injury record?
In 2022, he suffered a torn ACL, which kept him out for 10 months and resulted in him missing the World Cup in Qatar. Encouragingly, there has never been any sign of long-term damage, because he returned a far better — and stronger — player than he had been before.
Wirtz’s 2024-25 season was interrupted by an ankle injury, sustained after a challenge from Werder Bremen’s Mitchell Weiser in March. It cost him a month on the sidelines, but — touch wood — he has been fortunate with impact injuries given how often he carries the ball.
Seb Stafford-Bloor
Wirtz was injured against Bremen in March (INA FASSBENDER/AFP via Getty Images)
Someone who knows him says…
Martin Heck, Wirtz’s under-17s coach at Koln, told The Athletic: “He’s just a nice guy who wants to play football. If you meet him, he’s just the same funny, friendly person that I met when he was 12. He doesn’t want to be special. He doesn’t like publicity as much as some other players do. He’s a very family-oriented guy. But he has one of those personalities that I want to see more of in professional football. He’s just a good guy.
“But what’s special about Florian Wirtz, is that he has the greatest ambition I’ve ever seen in football from a player young or old. His will to win.”
Seb Stafford-Bloor
What do we know about the finances of the deal?
Wirtz has joined Liverpool on a five-year contract, committing himself to the red half of Merseyside until June 2030. Liverpool have agreed to pay a club-record £100million (€117.5m) for the 22-year-old, with a further £16m (€18.8m) potentially due in future add-ons.
The sale represents a club record for Leverkusen too, eclipsing the £72m (€80m) fee they initially received from Chelsea for Kai Havertz in 2020. That deal could have reached as high as £89m (€100m) were subsequent clauses met; the amounts guaranteed on the sale of Wirtz have already exceeded that figure.
Chris Weatherspoon
What impact will this have on Liverpool’s PSR calculation?
Wirtz’s arrival at Anfield adds significantly to Liverpool’s annual outgoings.
Assuming agent fees on the deal of 10 per cent, plus a transfer levy of four percent (confirmed by The Athletic as applicable on all transfer deals where a Premier League club is the buying party), the signing adds £21.4m to Liverpool’s transfer amortisation costs in 2025-26, then £22.7m annually until the end of the 2029-30 accounting period. Liverpool’s accounting period ends on 31 May, so a further £1.9m would fall into their 2030-31 accounting period. All of this is without including any of the potential £16m in add-ons due to Leverkusen.
Alongside the huge transfer fee, Wirtz could expect to earn around £200,000 per week at Anfield. With social security costs added on top, that works out at around £12m in annual costs to Liverpool, underlining the size of this deal. Employing Wirtz will cost Liverpool £11.3m in 2025-26, £12.0m annually over the following four years and then £1.0m in the opening month of their 2030-31 accounting period.
In all, the annual cost of Wirtz on Liverpool’s books across transfer fees, agent fees, transfer levies and estimated wages is a little under £35m. We estimate the total cost of the transfer to Liverpool, across Wirtz’s five-year contract, at £174.3m. That sum will rise higher if bonuses and fee add-ons are triggered.
Leverkusen spent a reported £250,000 (€300,000) on buying Wirtz, then aged 16, from FC Koln in January 2020. That leaves Wirtz with a nominal value in their books, meaning Leverkusen will book nearly all the proceeds as profit in their 2025 financials (Leverkusen’s accounts run from 1 January to 31 December).
Because this is an international transfer, and Wirtz spent time at Koln after his 11th birthday, Koln are due a slice of the overall fee in the form of a solidarity payment. That is limited to five per cent of the deal, though because Wirtz left for Leverkusen before turning 17, their slice will be rather lower.
We estimate that Koln are due a little under two per cent of the proceeds, or £1.8m (€2.2m). In turn, that leaves Leverkusen with a profit of around £98.2m (€115.3m). Those amounts do, however, exclude any training compensation that may be further payable to Koln.
Chris Weatherspoon
(Top photo: Pau Barrena/Getty Images)
