Jurgen Klopp Calls Out Liverpool Legend After Florian Wirtz Takedown

Germany manager and legendary former Liverpool boss Jürgen Klopp rubbished Jamie Carragher’s concerns about the Reds playmaker Florian Wirtz, dismissing the prominent pundit as typically “nervous.”

Carragher, who spent his entire playing career on Merseyside, piled in on Liverpool’s expensive recruit after an underwhelming debut season was compounded by a similarly mediocre start to his second campaign.

After a painfully familiar anonymous showing against Newcastle United, where Wirtz’s most notable involvement was his contribution to Andoni Iraola’s wildly disjointed midfield, Carragher claimed that the Germany international’s current role simply “is not working.”

“I’m not sure where he fits,” the retired Champions League winner lamented alongside his fellow Sky Sports pundit Gary Neville. “I almost thought you could put him in a pocket from the left, where he plays for Germany, but Iraola loves wingers, he wants players who've got energy up and down the flank.

Jamie Carragher was not particularly impressed. | James Gill - Danehouse/Getty Images

“I don’t think we’re seeing a massive underperformance. I think what we’ve seen for a year is probably what he is, which is a neat and tidy footballer. Not a player who should be worth £110 million, someone who probably should be £50–60 million, something like that.” Klopp firmly disagreed.

“As a soccer player, he’s [Wirtz] beyond reproach—in my eyes and in everyone else’s, too,” Liverpool’s Premier League-winning former coach told Sky Germany on Friday. “But Jamie Carragher, Gary Neville, and so on—they’re, of course, always the first to get nervous in England.”

Despite his defense of the wispy midfielder, Klopp did have a word of warning for Wirtz—one which was shared by his Liverpool counterpart Iraola.

Klopp, Andoni Iraola Agree on Challenge for Wirtz

Florian Wirtz — Wirtz had a forgettable debut season at Anfield. | Robbie Jay Barratt/AMA/Getty Images

Klopp and Iraola both come from the school of high pressing. As Liverpool’s Basque coach admitted this week, his style of play is “probably closer to Jürgen” than the club’s previous manager Arne Slot. If Wirtz is to work his way into either team, he needs to do exactly that: work.

“If you want to play for us, you have to be part of the counter-pressing,” Klopp warned. “And I played alongside Shinji Kagawa at the 10 [attacking midfield]. He never won a single tackle and was still one of the best counter-pressing players I’ve ever had. It’s not about physicality. It’s about wanting to get involved.”

Iraola is so eager to see his frontline hassle and harry the opposition he almost expects them to not last the full match. “For me, wingers, forwards, I always tell them that they don’t need to give us 90 minutes,” Liverpool’s manager revealed this week. “I tell them it is good news when they are exhausted because then we have taken everything from you and someone else will come in.”

“For offensive players, it’s not mandatory that you play the whole game,” Iraola added. “Once you are done, we can change you. I think it’s the best way, and they all have to understand it like this.”

Andoni Iraola — Iraola’s high-octane approach is physically demanding. | Peter Byrne/PA Images/Getty Images

There have been concerns over Wirtz’s best position, with Slot regularly deploying the spindly forward on the left wing. However, Klopp insisted that his best role is through the middle. “The problem in soccer is—and this is the job of the coach—that you have to integrate the talent or the players and place them in the positions where they perform best,” the German coach explained.

“I think that, at least, they’ve absolutely understood at Liverpool where he actually needs to play. That’s in the center, of course—the half-spaces, the pockets where he needs to be.”

Iraola appears prepared to give Wirtz the platform to thrive and now it’s up to the 23-year-old to deliver. “But Flo also has to learn, of course,” Klopp concluded, “he has to play in such a way that the coach doesn’t even think about taking him out. That’s just how it is. We can’t help him with that.”

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