Jurgen Klopp won a game as Germany manager on Thursday at the third time of asking, and then spent part of the evening talking about somebody else's club. Germany beat Serbia 2-0 at the Allianz Arena in front of 68,121, and the man who decided it was Florian Wirtz.
Wirtz hit the post first. Tom Bischof smashed in the chance that followed on 39 minutes, and after the break Wirtz took a pass from Maximilian Mittelstadt, killed it dead in the box with a first touch that bought him all the space he needed, and finished on 61. He was the best player on the pitch for most of the ninety minutes, and it was not close.
The quote was aimed at Anfield
"He was bursting with joy and worked incredibly hard," Klopp said. "That was exceptional; he played a fantastic game. Our style of play suits Flo Wirtz. I don't even know what Flo has to do right to make everyone happy. Everyone in Liverpool should be happy today."
Read that second-to-last sentence again. It is not a throwaway.
Wirtz cost Liverpool 116m pounds in June 2025. He has seven goals and eleven assists in 55 games for them. For a fee that size those are numbers people argue about rather than celebrate, and Klopp, who knows better than almost anyone what a Liverpool crowd sounds like when it is unsure about a signing, chose to say something about it on a night when nobody had asked him to.
Whether it means anything is a separate question
The honest answer is that one Nations League night against Serbia does not resolve a 116m-pound debate. Klopp's own record in the job is a draw with the Netherlands, a defeat by Greece and this. But the phrase that stands up is "our style of play suits Flo Wirtz", which is a claim about systems rather than a compliment about effort, and it is the kind of thing a manager says when he thinks the player is being asked to do the wrong job somewhere else.
A 44-man squad and the thousandth German
Klopp named 44 players for the four matches in this window and turned over most of the side from the previous game. One of those changes wrote itself into the record books. Celtic midfielder Mika Baur came on as a substitute and became the 1,000th man to play for Germany.
Asked how he planned to mark his first win as a national coach, Klopp was unromantic about it. "I have no idea. I've never won a game as national team coach. As a club coach, I'd know. Do we have any beer on the bus? There won't be any celebrating, though. We're all tired and need to recover."
Match facts: Germany 2-0 Serbia, Nations League League A Group 2, Allianz Arena, Munich, Thursday 1 October 2026. Half-time 1-0. Attendance 68,121. Goals: Bischof 39, Wirtz 61 (Mittelstadt). Klopp's first win as Germany manager after a draw with the Netherlands and a defeat by Greece. Wirtz, 23, joined Liverpool for 116m pounds in June 2025 and has seven goals and 11 assists in 55 games.
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