{"id":574419,"date":"2026-03-30T15:28:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T15:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/574419\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T15:28:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T15:28:08","slug":"florian-wirtz-liverpool-goal-drought-made-me-stronger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/574419\/","title":{"rendered":"Florian Wirtz: Liverpool goal drought made me stronger"},"content":{"rendered":"

Liverpool<\/a> playmaker Florian Wirtz<\/a> believes the struggles he encountered after making the move to Anfield have made him stronger.<\/p>\n

The 22-year-old Germany<\/a> international arrived in a \u00a3116 million ($153m) deal from Bayer Leverkusen<\/a> as one of Europe’s hottest young talents but bedding into a team which underwent a \u00a3450m ($593m) summer overhaul proved difficult.<\/p>\n

Wirtz struggled with the physicality but a tailored strength and conditioning programme designed to make him more robust for the Premier League<\/a> helped get him through.<\/p>\n

After failing to score in his first 22 appearances, he enjoyed a run of six in 10 matches from Boxing Day, although he has since gone eight games without scoring.<\/p>\n

Florian Wirtz failed to score in his first 22 Liverpool games.\u00a0Photo by Gaspafotos\/MB Media\/Getty Images.<\/p>\n

But his overall success is not entirely in his own hands as he has created over 70 chances in the Premier League and Champions League this season but the under-performing team has failed to capitalise.<\/p>\n

“It wasn’t an easy phase,” Wirtz, speaking about his first few months in England, told German television show Sportschau.<\/p>\n

“It’s sometimes good that things don’t always go upwards and that you experience a dip and grow stronger because of it.<\/p>\n

“That’s how I see it now as well — it has made me a bit stronger. I had to overcome resistance and adapt. I had to learn to become stronger and hold onto the ball.”<\/p>\n

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While his domestic form may have dipped again, he showed his quality in Germany’s 4-3 win over Switzerland<\/a> on Friday — with two goals and two assists — and he credited national team boss Julian Nagelsmann with helping him during his tough transitional phase.<\/p>\n

“The coach always supported me during the difficult phase after my move to Liverpool and always had an open ear for me,” he added.<\/p>\n

“He gave me tips and reassured me. That has brought us closer together.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Liverpool playmaker Florian Wirtz believes the struggles he encountered after making the move to Anfield have made him…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":574420,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-574419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574419\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/574420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}