Bayer Leverkusen CEO Fernando Carro has said that Liverpool was not Florian Wirtz’s first choice. He recently had his say while speaking to the press, and fans have been reacting.
According to him, despite joining the Reds in the summer, Wirtz and his family members initially preferred a record move to Real Madrid.
He added that the young midfielder eventually decided to join the English club after Madrid failed to bid for him.
His words, “The Wirtz family and Florian knew that extending his contract was our top priority. We were very cautious with salaries during the summer transfers. But we would have been prepared to make an exception for Florian.
We were prepared to push the boundaries and give everything to extend his contract. And for a while, it looked like it might work out.
In the end, Florian decided for himself what he wanted to do. The parents are his advisors, and I think it’s good that they fully respect Florian’s wishes.
He’s someone who wants to win the Champions League. We thought that with this team we would have been capable of going further than we did.
He saw that we had won the Bundesliga title, but winning the Champions League with Bayer Leverkusen might be more difficult.
He would definitely have gone to Madrid if Xabi had made the offer. But Xabi has less say at Madrid than he does with us.
One of Alonso’s greatest strengths was his ability to work with our scouting department to define who needed to be in our team. Florentino Perez decides the transfers, not Xabi Alonso.”
WOW.
Liverpool Football Club is a professional football club based in Liverpool, England. The club competes in the Premier League, the top tier of English football. Founded in 1892, the club joined the Football League the following year and has played its home games at Anfield since its formation.
Domestically, the club has won 19 league titles, eight FA Cups, a record nine League Cups and 16 FA Community Shields. In international competitions, the club has won six European Cups, three UEFA Cups, four UEFA Super Cups—all English records—and one FIFA Club World Cup.
The club established itself as a major force in domestic and European football in the 1970s and 1980s, when Bill Shankly, Bob Paisley, Joe Fagan and Kenny Dalglish, led the club to a combined 11 League titles and four European Cups. Liverpool won two further European Cups in 2005 and 2019 under the management of Rafael Benítez and Jürgen Klopp, respectively; the latter led Liverpool to a 19th league title in 2020, the club’s first during the Premier League era.
Anfield was built in 1884 on land adjacent to Stanley Park. Situated 2 miles (3 km) from Liverpool city centre, it was originally used by Everton before the club moved to Goodison Park after a dispute over rent with Anfield owner John Houlding. Left with an empty ground, Houlding founded Liverpool in 1892 and the club has played at Anfield ever since. The capacity of the stadium at the time was 20,000, although only 100 spectators attended Liverpool’s first match at Anfield.
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