Florian Wirtz’s agent shares how he tried to engineer Real Madrid move before Liverpool transfer | OneFootball

The agent of Florian Wirtz has revealed how he tried to engineer a move to Real Madrid for his client last summer before ultimately signing for Liverpool.

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The 22-year-old became the Reds’ then-club record acquisition when joining from Bayer Leverkusen in a £116m deal eight months ago (that fee was subsequently surpassed by Alexander Isak’s £125m arrival from Newcastle), with the Premier League champions seeing off Bayern Munich in the transfer race.

Although it took until LFC’s final match of 2025 for the German to score his first goal for the club, the famine them turned to feast as he netted six times in 10 matches (Transfermarkt), adding the end product to accompany his outstanding all-round play.

Agent had tried to secure Real Madrid move for Wirtz

In an interview with Bild, Wirtz’s agent Volker Struth has explained how he’d initially contacted Xabi Alonso – the player’s former Bayer Leverkusen boss who’d just begun an ultimately brief tenure in charge of Real Madrid – to try and secure a move to the Bernabeu at the start of last summer.

The 59-year-old said: “During the period when a move to Liverpool or Bayern was being discussed, I called Xabi Alonso and told him: ‘You have to take the lad from Leverkusen with you to Real.’

“Xabi replied: ‘You don’t have to tell me that; you have to tell [Real Madrid president] Florentino Perez.’ So I actually sent him a message: ‘Dear Florentino, I’ve told you many times before: I have a player here whom I would highly recommend. Florian Wirtz makes every team in the world better.’

“That year, it simply wasn’t the right time due to the squad and the budget. Even Real Madrid’s coffers aren’t always overflowing, but my wish remains that Florian will play there one day.”

(Photo by Michael Regan/Getty Images)

Could Wirtz end up at Real Madrid eventually?

Struth’s anecdote would suggest that Real Madrid would gladly have snapped up Wirtz if they hadn’t already committed to a spendthrift summer transfer window, so for that we can be very glad that they opted against signing him.

Their loss has proven to be Liverpool’s gain, with the playmaker impressing to such a degree that ex-Chelsea winger Pat Nevin has claimed that the ‘sublime’ 22-year-old could go on to reach ‘the stellar levels of a player like Kevin De Bruyne’.

Of course, the Anfield hierarchy had the wheels in motion for the German’s eventual transfer long before his agent approached Alonso and Perez, and the player’s ultimate preference was for a move to Merseyside, so LFC always appeared to be in a strong position.

Struth’s desire to see Wirtz join Real Madrid eventually does serve as a warning note for the Premier League champions, and it’s plausible that our number 7 could ultimately move on to the Bernabeu in later years if he were to crave that opportunity further down the line.

Success on the pitch for Liverpool (i.e. consistently challenging for major trophies and playing in the Champions League) should help to keep the 22-year-old here for quite some time yet, and his on-field brilliance would surely be instrumental in the Reds lifting silverware either this season or in future campaigns.