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Bayern Munich board member and former president Uli Hoeness has taken aim at Liverpool after his side missed out on signing Florian Wirtz from Bayer Leverkusen in the summer.
Wirtz has taken some time to get used to the demands of English soccer but has been slowly improving. This weekend, he returned from injury and did well as Liverpool won its first Premier League game in a month.
However, Bayern Munich is still hurting at losing out on bringing Wirtz in, having long sought to sign him. And Hoeness didn't hold back with his assessment of where Liverpool is going wrong.
"They spent €500m and are having a disastrous season," he said at an event in Munich, as quoted by BILD. "In my opinion, that’s because they only have superstars. They only have chiefs and no workers.
"I always say: at Liverpool, they’ll soon have to play with five balls because the stars won’t give up any of them. Poor Florian Wirtz, he doesn’t even get a ball there because Salah and Szoboszlai and all the others want to play with their own."
On Sunday, around the same time that Hoeness was speaking, Wirtz starred for Liverpool as it beat West Ham United in the Premier League.
Arne Slot was asked about Wirtz during his post-match press conference, and he was impressed by the German's showing, where he was a bright spark in the absence of Mohamed Salah, especially in the first half.
"We tried to create an extra midfielder and he was very important for us to find every time the extra midfielder," the Liverpool boss said.
"He was good when he made a dribble, he was really good in his one-touch balls, I even remember a moment when he played the ball diagonally in the 18-yard box to Cody Gakpo, which then didn't lead to a shot so no xG value.
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"We had many of those moments, and he was part of many of those moments, I think. A good game.
"The performance staff were constantly telling me, 'He needs to go out, he needs to go out' because he's been out for one-and-a-half, two weeks and he only trained once.
"To a certain extent maybe it was a bit of risk to keep him in the team, but some situations ask for an exception and I think today was one of them."
Liverpool.com says: Wirtz has always been too good to fail at Anfield, but it was a case of getting him up to speed. He has come into a different league at a time when the rest of the team hasn't been performing, but is starting to showcase his class.
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