Star recruits of Liverpool’s 2025/2026 season, Alexander Isak (27 years old) and Florian Wirtz (23 years old) cost the Reds no less than €265 million. The former Swedish striker from Newcastle landed in exchange for €140 million, while the German attacking midfielder from Bayer Leverkusen discovered the Premier League for €125 million. Unfortunately for them, the two reinforcements had a very complicated first year on the banks of the Mersey.
Florian Wirtz was one of Arne Slot’s starters, but he continued to perform insipidly. For his part, Isak arrived injured and was only able to score 4 small goals in 22 appearances before fracturing his fibula. Today, Andrew Robertson (32 years old) came to shed new light on the difficulties of Isak and Wirtz. Having left for Tottenham after spending nine years at Liverpool, the Scottish international recalls that a terrible tragedy had a strong impact, namely the tragic death of Portuguese striker Diogo Jota in a road accident.
Jota’s death changed everything
“It’s difficult to describe or talk about because what we experienced was truly horrible. If I talk about the new recruits, they arrived at a club that was heartbroken. And that’s where I felt so bad for these guys, because they had just signed, and for huge amounts of money at that. In terms of football, it took them months to adapt because football didn’t matter to us anymore. It was the truth, because we had just lost one of our best friends in the locker room. I think all footballers have that little something extra, don’t they? I think that when we sometimes lose that little extra, we can no longer give the best of ourselves. And I think that last season, we lost that little extra”he declared in the program The Overlapbefore concluding.
“When I look back on it, maybe we lost a little bit of that determination and things like that, because I know there were times when we were like, ‘What’s the point?’ Look at what Jotsy’s family (Jota’s nickname, editor’s note) is going through, look at his children. » But yes, we were grieving as a group. After all, he was our friend. For us, he’s not a footballer. He was a teammate, he was a friend, he was everything to us. » And if Isak has been able to find form since the start of the 2026/2027 Premier League season (4 goals scored in 5 matches), Florian Wirtz still cannot.
