{"id":140650,"date":"2025-09-08T02:09:48","date_gmt":"2025-09-08T02:09:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/140650\/"},"modified":"2025-09-08T02:09:48","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T02:09:48","slug":"conor-bradley-makes-florian-wirtz-admission-before-difficult-night-with-liverpool-116m-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/140650\/","title":{"rendered":"Conor Bradley makes Florian Wirtz admission before ‘difficult’ night with Liverpool \u00a3116m man"},"content":{"rendered":"

Liverpool team-mates Conor Bradley and Florian Wirtz will go up against each other in Cologne this evening<\/p>\n

15:20, 07 Sep 2025Updated 15:20, 07 Sep 2025<\/p>\n

\"BRATISLAVA,Big money Liverpool signing Florian Wirtz will take on a familiar face this evening(Image: Lars Baron\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Conor Bradley is hoping to cause his new Liverpool team-mate Florian Wirtz plenty of problems when Northern Ireland take on Germany in a World Cup qualifier tonight (Sunday). The two Reds could come directly up against one another in this evening.<\/p>\n

Wirtz<\/a> started on the left for Germany in their surprise 2-0 defeat to Slovakia while Bradley<\/a> is expected to again be in at right wing-back for Michael O’Neill’s men.<\/p>\n

Northern Ireland can expect to be digging in defensively for much of the night, but while he is braced for a tough test in that regard, Bradley wants to put Liverpool’s \u00a3116m man on the back foot in the German’s home town of Cologne.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Chief executive certain Liverpool have already signed the ‘next’ Virgil van Dijk<\/a>READ MORE: Liverpool sent strong Florian Wirtz message as Alexander Isak decision defended – ‘If people worry’<\/a><\/p>\n

“Florian’s a top player,” Bradley said. “There’s a reason we bought him for the money we did. He’s had a brilliant few years at Leverkusen and now he’s come to us. I think he started the season really well.<\/p>\n

“He’s really good with the ball. He’s really creative and he’s not scared to take a few risks with the ball as well.<\/p>\n

“So he’s a top player and I know it’s going to be a difficult night for me, but hopefully I can make it a difficult night for him too.<\/p>\n

“I think that’s probably one of the best bits of my game, especially playing for Northern Ireland, that I can get forward and try to create chances for my team-mates.<\/p>\n

“But I know I’ve got to be disciplined as well. They’re obviously going to be really good with the ball and we’re probably going to not have as much of the ball.<\/p>\n

“But we know our game plan and we’re ready.”<\/p>\n

Bradley came into this international break having only made one late substitute appearance for Liverpool<\/a> so far this season, coming on in the 80th minute of their 3-2 win at Newcastle United last month, after a hamstring injury disrupted his summer.<\/p>\n

That raised question marks over his fitness, but he managed 76 minutes of Thursday’s 3-1 win over Luxembourg, with Northern Ireland boss O’Neill taking advantage of a 66th minute red card for Seid Korac to rest a number of players towards the end.<\/p>\n

“The pre-season wasn’t ideal, with picking up the little injury that I did, but I feel really good now,” Bradley said.<\/p>\n

“(I got) 70-something minutes the other night and I’ve recovered well and my body feels good. So hopefully there’ll be 90 in the legs for Sunday night. I’ve just got to play it by ear and see how the game goes.”<\/p>\n

Germany come into the game wounded by Thursday’s defeat in Bratislava, their third on the spin after a disappointing end to the Nations League in June.<\/p>\n

“(We were) shocked,” Bradley said of the players’ reaction to the result. “I think you can look at it both ways. I think it’s good and bad.<\/p>\n

“It means the group’s wide open now which is good for us. If we can get a positive result tomorrow night it’s only good for us.<\/p>\n

“It was a bit of a shock, but we’re just looking forward to tomorrow night now.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Liverpool team-mates Conor Bradley and Florian Wirtz will go up against each other in Cologne this evening 15:20,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140651,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[70768,17224,1711,403,99],"class_list":["post-140650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-conor-bradley","tag-florian-wirtz","tag-liverpool-fc","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}