Robert Huth Questions Florian Wirtz's Future at Liverpool
Robert Huth does not see a happy ending coming for Florian Wirtz at Liverpool.
"I really find it hard to see how this can still turn around," the former Premier League defender said on All Out Football's In The Mixer podcast, laying out a bleak forecast for the 23-year-old’s future at Anfield.
Huth, who knows the league as well as anyone after 322 appearances and a title win with Leicester City in 2016, accepts Wirtz is “obviously a good player”. That is where the praise stops. For him, the gap is not about talent, but about toughness.
"He has real problems with his physicality," said the 42-year-old, who won 19 caps for Germany and played at the 2006 World Cup on home soil. In his eyes, the Premier League may simply be a step too far for the playmaker’s body.
Liverpool have gone all in on proving him wrong. The club paid a base fee of 125 million euros to Bayer Leverkusen in 2025 to bring Wirtz to England, a statement signing to reshape their attack. His first season, though, never quite caught fire. There were flashes, glimpses of the player who lit up the Bundesliga, but not the sustained impact that fee demands.
Now a new chapter has begun under Andoni Iraola. Inside the club, this second year is supposed to be the one that delivers the definitive breakthrough, the moment Wirtz truly belongs in red rather than just visiting.
Wirtz, for his part, insists that process is already well under way.
"I would say that I have developed in almost every area. Definitely when it comes to my physical level," he told RTL and Sky recently, pushing back at Huth’s assessment and others like it. Training, he stressed, has become a daily test of his limits.
"Even in training, I have to push myself almost to my limits every day, simply because there are players here who are also fully committed in training every day and have that kind of quality. You also have to be at a good level yourself," the Germany international explained.
Huth remains unconvinced. He pointed straight at Wirtz’s display in Liverpool’s opening Premier League game of the season, the 2-2 draw at Newcastle United, as evidence that the needle has not moved enough.
"His body language is also a bit poor," Huth said, unimpressed by what he saw from the midfielder. For him, the problem is no longer theoretical. It is live, visible, and expensive.
He does not believe Wirtz can turn things around any time soon and even floated the idea that Liverpool might cut their losses sooner rather than later. "By Christmas they will probably look to move him on if he does not improve, because he has become an expensive problem for Liverpool," the former centre-back claimed.
A record signing fighting to prove he belongs. A World Cup defender convinced he does not. One of them will be proved right long before that Christmas deadline ever arrives.
