Germany manager Julian Nagelsmann has confirmed that Florian Wirtz will start against Northern Ireland, while offering Liverpool’s summer signing some advice on gamesmanship.
Wirtz is a supremely intelligent footballer and boasts such an awareness of his surroundings that you could mistake him for having 360° vision.
An area in which his national team manager thinks he could “be smarter,” however, is his gamesmanship.
His comments came after Wirtz was dispossessed in midfield on Thursday evening, which led to Slovakia’s opening goal in their 2-0 win over Germany.
“Flo is an extremely important player for us. He tried a lot on Thursday and will try again tomorrow (Sunday evening), which means he will play,” Nagelsmann said.
“I didn’t speak to him about that moment, but if I did, I would’ve told him that he should fall to the ground because it was a clear foul.
“It wasn’t a regular goal. You should be smarter in the situation and fall, because it was a clear foul.
“It was unfortunate that we conceded a goal, but we didn’t concede it because Flo argued with a player on the halfway line. There were other reasons.”
Wirtz’s honesty shouldn’t necessarily be criticised – it is a refreshing approach given the simulation on show in football in the modern era – but this doesn’t mean Nagelsmann should be ignored.
With a few exceptions, Liverpool are a team that have often been noted for not being as in touch with their dark arts as they perhaps could, when appropriate.
Arne Slot has actually mentioned Wirtz before, too, when speaking about his side’s honest attitude to the game.
He said before the start of the season: “If there is one team in the league that is, in my opinion, the most honest when we play – I sometimes blame them that they never try to make from a foul a little bit more – and never dives and never time delays and all these kind of things, then it is us.
“In the [Community Shield] game against Palace, they held Florian in midfield and he didn’t fall over and the referee says, ‘If you don’t fall, I don’t give a free-kick’, which is a little bit weird.
“Then, a fraction later, they fell down in a moment which wasn’t even a foul and the referee thought, ‘Oh, he fell down so it probably is a foul’.
“We had much more ball possession than Palace but we made 13 fouls and they made five. That tells you also about who we are.”
While we can be proud of Liverpool’s approach to football, there is a time and a place to show some chicanery in the game.