Florian Wirtz made very bold prediction to coach long before Liverpool transfer

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Florian Wirtz's youth coach at FC Koln has recalled how the youngster pledged to win the Ballon d'Or when he was just a young boy. Wirtz spent 10 years in Koln's academy between 2010 and 2020 before joining Leverkusen, and it was after a game for one of Koln's youth teams — in which he scored a stunning goal — that he told his coach at the time of his lofty ambition.

"I [first] heard the name [of Wirtz] in a very early situation in my last club, FC Koln," Markus Daun, a youth coach at Koln, recalled. "After this game, we go for a dinner and the guys of the team ask me late in the evening, 'Mr Daun, can we drink a beer?' and I said, 'I don't know if you can do it.

But you can go in another room, and I don't see it!' "So they drink two or three beers, and after this, Florian came to me and was a little bit happy about his goal, and he said 'Mr Daun, I like you very much.' "I asked him in a meeting about his career goals. All the guys from the team said, 'I will be German championship winner this year, I will be in the starting XI,' and Florian said, 'I will win the Ballon' d'Or in the future.' "And I said, 'OK.' Normally I would say, 'OK, please, stay realistic', but in this case I said, 'OK, go your way and you can achieve it.' "This guy has had big challenges in his life, between very young ages to Under-17 with big injuries, he broke his leg, but he comes back much stronger than before.