A Touch of Wirtz
Florian Wirtz was everywhere in Liverpool's friendly win over Athletic Club. His career data suggests he could be even more heavily involved in future.
You should be very excited about the impact Florian Wirtz will have for Liverpool. Did you see him against Athletic Club on Monday night? Wow.
If you missed it, the video compilers of the world have been all over his performance. His touches are worth revisiting even if you saw the match. Immerse yourself in the multiple facets of his game here:
Passing and pressing. Carrying and harrying. Dribbles and through-balls. Giving, going, Wirtz did it all. He set up the shot which led to the second goal, then dummied the assist for the winner.
The 22-year-old linked up superbly with all three forwards. Wirtz launched a counter attack by passing to Hugo Ekitike, heading over the crossbar later in the same move thanks to a cross from Cody Gakpo.
His connection with Mohamed Salah looks the most exciting, in part thanks to his excellent movement within the opposition penalty box. The Egyptian found Wirtz in the area with a lovely pass, only for the former Leverkusen man’s cross across the six-yard box to be blocked out of play. He then almost found Salah with a through-ball in the second half.
Their best moment occurred in the 13th minute. Wirtz passed the ball from inside the Athletic Club box out to Salah, who then played it back through to Gakpo for a big chance. He steered his shot wide of the far post, with Wirtz almost making it to that region in time for a tap-in. These sort of triangles could be devastating for Liverpool.
He repeatedly offered a passing option for defenders. He took set pieces, setting up Dominik Szoboszlai for a shot via a corner. He regained possession in all three thirds of the pitch by pressing opponents. Wirtz did it all.
The German logged 55 touches in his 74 minutes, the equivalent of 67 across a whole match. His 36 in one half against Milan scales up even higher.
Pre-season friendly disclaimer notwithstanding, this is a very heavy level of involvement against two clubs who will have played Champions League football in 2025 once the year is out. Looking for attacking midfielders with this many pro-rata touches for Liverpool at Europe’s top table will leave you scrabbling around in a fairly bare cupboard. Against top five league sides, there is a sole example.
Again, it’s pre-season. Let’s not go overboard here. Then again, maybe we should. When you analyse Wirtz’s career data, these recent examples undersell how crucial he might be, if anything. The Reds’ new number seven has very few peers at dominating attacking thirds.
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FBRef says he averaged 80.3 touches per 90 minutes in 2024/25. In his final game for Leverkusen, a 2-2 draw at Mainz, they list Wirtz as having 56 touches.
Which is a little odd, as Fotmob’s page for the match states he had 61. They give 86.9 as his average per 90 for the season, so even higher. Sofascore agrees on the figure for the Mainz match, yet a glance at Wirtz’s player page shows him averaging 73.4 touches, way below the other two sources. Granted, they mean per game, which isn’t immediately clear, but that equates to 87.2 per 90 so still doesn’t agree with FBRef or Fotmob.
Confused yet? Congratulations. You’re now ready to delve into the swamp of touch data. I can’t fully explain it despite spending far longer than is healthy trying to decode this stuff.
Something of vital importance here is that data companies don’t mean that a player literally touched the ball X number of times. ‘Actions’ would be a better name, as it sums passes, shots, tackles and so on. It’s exactly which metrics are included on each site which causes discrepancies. We’ll be sticking with FBRef here as it’s by far the easiest to search.
Josh Williams (a.k.a. Distance Covered) picked up on Wirtz’s absurd level of involvement when writing about him in June.
And he’s always involved. Here’s a mad one for you. Wirtz has posted over 80 touches per 90 in two consecutive Bundesliga seasons now. That’s insane for a forward. Genuinely mental.
Like, for context, only 12 players in the Premier League cleared the 80-touch bar this season. Virgil van Dijk, Cristian Romero, Mateo Kovačić, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Joško Gvardiol, Tosin Adarabioyo, Manuel Akanji, William Saliba, Levi Colwill, Reece James, Kyle Walker and Joachim Andersen. Notice a theme?
A Driblab graphic made a similar point in a different way. It highlighted Wirtz’s touch level against his (at the time future) attacking colleagues at Liverpool. The gap separating him from the top Red was almost as wide as the margin between that player (Szoboszlai) and the club’s back marker, Darwin Núñez.
Wirtz’s rate will inevitably decrease in the Premier League simply through playing for a team with a greater number of elite attacking threats. No other player will be the main sheriff in town when Salah is saddled up alongside them.
This proportion of a team’s touches remains remarkable for a player in Wirtz’s position. Only four of the 101 other attacking midfielders or forwards with at least as much playing time in the big leagues topped 10.9 per cent for this metric.
Lucas Paquetá is the most familiar of those that did, but none of the quartet got within 11.5 touches per 90 of Florian’s average. He was this integral for a side that had the seventh most touches in England, France, Germany, Italy or Spain.
As with any metric, tactical decisions play a part. Steven Gerrard will have had a lot of touches for the lesser Liverpool sides he represented as his colleagues would give him the ball in the hope he did something magic with it.
That doesn’t happen without being a generational talent, regardless of the standard of a player’s teammates though. Someone like Gerrard has their touch count pushed up by being in the thick of the midfield action too. It is rare for a player to record as many actions in the attacking third as Wirtz did over each of the previous two campaigns, as you can see here:
The only other players with similarly heavy involvement levels at the business end of the pitch across at least 26 per 90s of pitch time were Kevin De Bruyne, Eden Hazard and Lionel Messi.
That Lionel, always popping up whenever looking at this sort of thing. Messi is the sole man on the list with more seasons with 40+ attacking third touches per 90 than Wirtz. He’d have shedloads of them if his peak had occurred in the advanced data era. There’s no better company to keep.
Florian and Lionel. Could almost be half of Kraftwerk. If you were excited about Wirtz after his Anfield ‘debut’, you should be even more amped up after bathing in some of these numbers.
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