Wirtz, a new Havertz in the Bundesliga
How a 17 year old led Leverkusen to breach a pact with neighbours and not regret it
After an uninspired home draw (1-1) against Werder Bremen and an even worse defeat at Union Berlin (0-1), Bayer Leverkusen’s Dutch coach Peter Bosz was able to rub his hands with glee, as young Florian Wirtz was back in the squad for the so important match against top-table rivals Borussia Dortmund. And the youngster corresponded, when, after 87 minutes of play, he got to the end of a Diaby-Schick one-two and beat Burki with a clinical finish to give his team a tough win (2-1). It was Wirtz’s fourth Bundesliga goal, even if he still has more than three months to go until celebrating his 18th birthday. Enough for the kid to enter a series of record sheets in German football, after having caused a diplomatic dispute between North-Rhein clubs and before confirming what everybody is already saying about him: “Wirtz will play for the national team and will develop towards being a world class player”, former Bayer Leverkusen CEO Reiner Calmund said.
Wirtz’s story did not develop as fast as the seven seconds it took him to score from the half-way line in a Under17 game FC Köln played against Wuppertaler SV, a little more than one year ago. “Wait! Did you say FC Köln? But doesn’t the kid play for Bayer Leverkusen?!”. Well, he does… now. And that is part of his legend. Florian Wirtz was born in May the 3rd 2003 in Pulheim, just 14km northwest of Cologne. He started playing football for SV Grün-Weiss Brauweiler, the local team where his father, a former officer of the Federal Border Police, was president. But he seemed too good for them. So, when he was eight, he tried his luck at FC Köln. His abilities were so evident they wanted to keep him right away and he didn’t even have to go through the customary trials. At FC Köln, young Florian made his way up until he reached the Under17 team. In 2018/19, after a poor first half to the season, where he collected injuries and the team ended up second placed in the West, Wirtz was key in the decisions, playing and scoring both in the semi-finals against Bayern München as in the final, versus Borussia Dortmund. Having just turned 16, an Under15 and Under16 international, the kid was also a very important player at the German Under17 champions. Enough for his father – who also turned to be his agent – to refuse the approach for a new three (plus one) season contract.
In cases such as this, it’s normal that the players sign contracts linking them to the club until the first season as a first team player. Not Wirtz. He signed only until June 2020, when he would be 17. Both Bayern München as TSG Hoffenheim, Borussia Dortmund and even Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool FC invited him to visit club’s facilites, thinking ahead to the day he would be a man. And as the 2019/20 season confirmed the best expectations – he scored nine goals in ten matches until the New Year, boosting FC Köln to the first position in the West – Leverkusen didn’t waste time and signed him in January. Normal? No, because Leverkusen, FC Köln and Borussia Mönchengladbach, three clubs who are geographically very close to each other (Leverkusen is 50 kms away from Mönchengladbach and 15kms away from Cologne), have an informal pact, preventing them to sign players from the neighbour’s youth teams. It all started in 2001, when then 12 years old Marco Quotschalla was seduced to move from Leverkusen to FC Köln. Quotschalla, who ended up playing just two games in the Bundesliga, for Alemania Aachen, before facing oblivion in Italian and Luxembourgish lower divisions, didn’t quite make the career everybody expected from him, but sure had an impact on the clubs from the Cologne area.
Views on the pact
Leverkusen claim they didn’t breach the agreement, as Wirtz was already a professional and his contract would end in six months. “The player was surprisingly on the market and willing to change. It would have been grossly negligent not to enter negotiations”, Leverkusen’s Sports Director Rudi Völler claimed, after signing the youngster until 2022. “Wirtz was top of the wish list of some top clubs, both home and abroad”, he added. Max Eberl, his counterpart at Borussia Mönchengladbach, didn’t like the fuss, but said he thinks what Leverkusen did was not in clear breach of the agreement. “None of us liked to see what happened in the Wirtz case. But I understand Völler’s position, even if there is a very fine line separating what’s right and what’s wrong”, he stated, adding that he would like to see the informal pact kept in place. “Here it’s not like at Bayern or at Dortmund, clubs that are kind of isolated. We have several very good training facilities concentrated in a small territory, so it’s better that we refrain from recruiting players from each other”, Eberl explained.
And it was not so difficult to convince Wirtz and his family to make the move. At Leverkusen he would not only have a better team around him, with good prospects of making it through to the Champions League, as he would be better paid and – the icing on the cake – his new club would also welcome his older sister, Julianne, who now represents Leverkusen in the women’s Bundesliga. Equally significant is that Leverkusen has a recent tradition of promoting young talent, as they did with Julian Brandt and, recently, Kai Havertz, who by the time was playing for them and in the summer moved to Chelsea, in a 80 million euros transfer. “We showed Florian the sporting benefits he could have with us. And also the benefits that we gave in the past to young players such as Havertz, Brandt or Henrichs”, said Leverkusen’s coach Peter Bosz. That’s all Wirtz wanted to hear. “I had to look at the future. And when I look back, it was the right decision. I can understand that FC Köln were disappointed and that their fans are still angry about it, but I feel very comfortable in Leverkusen”, Wirtz explained later.
A start with a bang
The youngster was going to complete the move only in the summer, but the trouble all that created led the clubs to anticipate it, so he played the second half of the Under17 season for Leverkusen. In four games before the Covid19 pandemic forced a stop on competition, he scored twice and made three assists, so it was to no surprise that Peter Bosz called him up to train with the big boys, at the restart. And all things contributed to his early debut, as when the team travelled to Bremen, for the first game after the interruption, Kevin Volland was out and Lars Bender sustained an injury to his right foot. Bosz didn’t hesitate and called up the kid. “Is he good enough?”, reporters asked the Dutch. “He must be. Otherwise he wouldn’t be training with us”, Bosz answered. And he sure meant it, as when he gave his team sheet, there was Florian Wirtz, starting with the number 27 shirt. He was replaced after 61 minutes, when Leverkusen already led 3-1. And even if he had no direct participation on the team’s goals, that was enough to make him the third youngest player ever to appear in a Bundesliga match. Wirtz was 17 years and 15 days old, beaten only by Dortmund’s Nuri Sahin and FC Köln’s Yann Bisseck, who got to start even before their 17th birthday. Meanwhile, the list was rampaged by Dortmund’s Yousoufa Moukoko, who had his debut just one day after his 16th birthday, last November.
Wirtz played nine times until the end of the season, almost always coming from one of the sides, as the second striker position was still occupied by Havertz. He scored his first goal on June the 6th, beating Bayern München and national team goalkeeper Manuel Neuer in a 2-4 defeat. That made him the youngest ever goalscorer in the Bundesliga, at the age of 17 years and 34 days – and that record also was taken recently by Moukoko, who scored for Dortmund with 16 years and 28 days. The real challenge for Wirtz, anyway, was still to come, as in the summer Chelsea grabbed Havertz for a fee of 80 million euros. Bosz had to rebuild his attack and, according to what he said, had the chance to bring in Mario Götze, Germany’s goalscorer in the 2014 World Cup final. The transfer didn’t go ahead and Götze went instead to PSV Eindhoven. “We already have Wirtz to do his position. He is an intelligent player and a massive talent”, Bosz said at the time.
So Wirtz not only was given that responsibility as he also moved in from a wide position to the centre of the field, playing as a second striker. And things went very well for him: even with some injuries holding him back, he scored six goals in all competitions (three in the Bundesliga, two in the Europa League and one in the DFB Pokal), adding six assists (five in the Bundesliga and one in the Europa League). In October, being just 17 years and five months old, he got his first Under21 international match, starting in the Stefan Kuntz squad that beat Moldova 5-0 at Chisinau, in a European Championship qualifier. Not bad for a kid that gets up, goes to school from 7h30 to 9h30, has a training session with his teammates, and goes back to classes after lunch.
“He is one of the most impressive talents in Germany”, Stefan Kuntz said before that match in Moldova. “The kid has a lot of potential. If he keeps his feet on the ground, he can become a second Havertz”, claimed Leverkusen’s defender Aleksandr Dragovic. “During the lockdown, when he came to the first team training, we could see how special he was”, added Austrian midfielder Julian Baumgartlinger. Wirtz, anyway, is still enjoying the ride. “I know I still have a lot to improve, even if I copied Kai [Havertz] how he acts in front of goal and how he plays in spaces”, he recognised when he extended his contract with Leverkusen for one more year, until 2023. He will be 20 years old then. And a whole life ahead of him. “The last few months showed me that you can’t plan much”, he said.
One year ago, who would’ve said he would be where he is now?