£116m Wirtz Has Shades of Zidane, and Could Be Destined For Same Greatness
**And how fluid Liverpool will be, just like liquid football**
The last player Liverpool signed in this age group who was enticingly proven but also with a high level of potential was probably Fernando Torres: like Florian Wirtz, several seasons at a big (but not the biggest) club, 30 caps for a major country, playing first-team football since aged 16, with the then-23-year-old Torres immediately going from a 20-goal-a-season max (in all comps) striker to 30+.
His 18 goals in just 22 league games in 2008/09 earned him a place in the PFA team of the year, yet all those missed games probably cost Liverpool the title. For three seasons he was unstoppable, when fit.
Using our own Premier League inflation model (TPI), I make it that Torres cost c.£151m in 2024 money – I need to update to 2025 money soon. But players signed a few years earlier by Chelsea and Man United top £200m, with FFP’s introduction in 2010 generally lowering the upper end of spending on individuals (the risk spread more via the squad as a whole, and for some clubs, employing 30 lawyers to make magic happen).
Torres was an instant sensation, and but for injuries, the insane ownership of Gillett and Hicks getting the club into terrible (leveraged) debt, and things falling apart in the final season under Rafa Benítez, before the mind-numbingly bad Roy Hodgson took over, Torres could have been a Liverpool legend, but he was, for three years, a world-class no.9.
While there’s something a bit alarmingly Jamie Vardy-like in how Wirtz looks, the heaps of video I’ve trawled through brought to mind Zinedine Zidane. No two players are ever clones, but he just has that kind of vibe.
While it’s hard for anyone to reach the level Zidane did (and stay there), and comparisons can always fall down, Wirtz is ahead of the curve.
Wirtz, a few inches shorter than the more upright Zidane, has incredibly fast feet, great acceleration, and the eye and perfect weight for a pass.
He’s not Messi-fast or with the insane dribbling skills like Messi or Maradona, and so not the kind to become contender for the GOAT.
But there’s a level below that, perhaps with Johan Cruyff at its uppermost, and where players like Michel Platini and Zidane reside. In time, Wirtz can put himself in that bracket.
Indeed, Torres is not remembered in either top brackets, but was widely regarded as the best no.9 in the world for a year or two.
Wirtz has basically yet to play football since turning 22 (which he did at the end of this past season), so his entire oeuvre is aged 21 and younger. He’s 22 now, like Ryan Gravenberch at this point a year ago.
You could also say, of course, that Lamine Yamal of Barcelona is outstripping Lionel Messi at the same age, but so were Bojan Krkić (breaking Messi's record of the youngest Barcelona player to feature in a La Liga match) and Ansu Fati (in the team aged 16.)
When people said that Fati (or even worse players) was the new Messi, it was fanciful; but Wirtz can genuinely be as good as Zidane.
It’s one thing being briefly ahead of the curve, another staying there; but five or six years of football, and a sample size of c.200 club games and 30+ internationals before turning 22, is enough proof of a player’s ability and consistency, and the potential to get faster, stronger, smarter and just incrementally improve in all areas, a lack of injuries permitting.
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