FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) – Florian Wirtz delivered two assists as Liverpool defeated Eintracht Frankfurt 5-1 on Wednesday, ending a four-game losing streak and asserting he believes he is capable of significantly more contribution to the team.
wirtz, who joined Liverpool from Bayer Leverkusen for a transfer fee potentially reaching 116 million pounds ($155 million), had faced scrutiny for a lack of goal contributions prior to the Champions League match. He set up goals for Cody Gakpo and Dominik Szoboszlai during the victory. In the 90th minute, Wirtz was in a scoring position but Mohamed Salah chose to shoot instead of pass.
“In the first half I made it hard for myself getting into good spaces and then I was unfortunate to lose the ball before we conceded, but on the whole it was OK,” Wirtz said. “I no that I can do much, much more. I think the second half was really good, and from everyone else too, and so I’m satisfied that we’ve won today and that I finally have a goal involvement.”
Wirtz assisted Gakpo on a counterattack in the 66th minute for Liverpool’s fourth goal and then passed to Szoboszlai four minutes later, who scored from the edge of the penalty area.
Prior to Wednesday’s game, Wirtz had not scored or assisted a goal for Liverpool in either the Champions League or Premier League.His onyl previous goal involvement since joining the club came in his debut game against Crystal Palace in the Community shield.
Liverpool manager Arne Slot defended Wirtz’s early performances before kickoff, stating that statistics don’t fully reflect his impact. “In football, people always judge players on assists and goals. And he’s been very unlucky in that he could have been on three, four, five, six assists,” Slot told DAZN. “Even last game (against Manchester United), it wasn’t an assist or a goal from him but maybe the most vital part of the goal came from him. The pre-assist, if you want to call it like this. So Florian’s had a good start at Liverpool but if you only look at goals and assists then you might get a different opinion. But that’s not my opinion.”
