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Florian Wirtz surprisingly grew up idolising ex-Chelsea star Marko Marin, over the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi(Image: Julian Finney)

Florian Wirtz will be hoping to have a bigger impact on the Premier League in Liverpool red than his boyhood hero Marko Marin did wearing Chelsea blue.

The champions' British record signing grew up idolising Marin when he first started showing his potential playing alongside older boys at Grun-Weiss Brauweiler, the junior club on the outskirts of Cologne where his dad Hans-Joachim acts as both the chairman and his youngest son’s agent.

When the Bosnia-born German international moved to Stamford Bridge from Werder Bremen in the summer of 2012 in a deal worth £6.5million, big things were expected of him.

But he played just two Premier League starts for the Londoners and was loaned out to Sevilla, Fiorentina, Anderlecht and Trabzonspor before joining Olympiakos three years later.

Marin was a hugely-talented attacking midfielder playing his best football with Bremen when Bundesliga rivals FC Koln launched a charm offensive to sign the precocious seven-year-old Wirtz in 2010.

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Club officials wanted to present him with a shirt bearing the name of his favourite player - and were stunned when the youngster name-checked Marin rather than Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi or German star Mesut Ozil.

He still treasures the jersey.

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Liverpool have agreed a deal with Bayer Leverkusen that will see them pay £100million plus another £16million in add-ons to bring Wirtz to Anfield in a bid to improve a team that cruised to the title under Arne Slot in the Dutchman’s first season.

The 22-year-old is a team player who isn’t afraid to push against the grain.

The two rivals had struck a pact not to poach each other’s youth players, but Leverkusen felt that the outstanding promise being shown by the 16-year-old was something they just couldn’t ignore.

Wirtz joined Leverkusen after a bitter dispute with Koln, but ex-chief Rudi Voller says it would have been "negligent" not to sign him(Image: Pau Barrena/Getty Images)

Rudi Voller, the legendary German striker who won the World Cup in 1990, was Leverkusen’s technical director.

He explained: "Failing to sign Wirtz at that age would have been negligent - and he was going to leave them when his contract expired that summer anyway."

Wirtz continued his studies at his new club, getting top marks in advanced maths, advanced geography, German and biology.

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