FLORIAN WIRTZ missed most of Kevin De Bruyne’s first season at Manchester City — because the German star’s family did not even own a telly until 2016.
Yet this summer, playmaker Wirtz could replace icon De Bruyne at the Etihad to make Pep Guardiola’s side essential viewing once again.
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City are fighting it out with new champions Liverpool and German giants Bayern Munich to seal a deal for £126MILLION-RATED Wirtz.
Boss Xabi Alonso may also attempt to take Wirtz with him from Bayer Leverkusen to his reported new club Real Madrid in the coming weeks.
FA Cup finalists City want him to take over from De Bruyne, who pulls down the curtain on an unforgettable, trophy-laden decade at the club when leaving on a free this summer.
And it is easy to see why Guardiola is after the 22-year-old, who appears as grounded as he is talented and hard-working.
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Born in Pulheim, on the North-West outskirts of Cologne, Wirtz has NINE siblings — with four brothers and five sisters.
He is the youngest of the ten kids, though only he and sister Juliane are the children of both dad Hans-Joachim, 71, and mum Karin Gross, 64, with the rest from previous relationships.
Wirtz’s parents were once mistaken as his grandparents by a red-faced DAZN reporter during a man-of-the-match interview in March last year.
Like Florian, 23-year-old Juliane is also a professional footballer and plays for Werder Bremen — all the siblings apart from Marie play football.
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Florian and Juliane’s first club was local side Grun-Weiss Brauweiler, where his dad is still chairman.
The family spent so much time there that they did not feel it necessary to buy a TV for their home until just before Euro 2016. If they wanted to watch games, they would view them together in the clubhouse.
Wirtz honed his lethal shooting by firing footballs at the family piano as an 18-month-old, before joining Cologne at seven and stayed for ten years.
Bayern tried to sign him in 2020, along with Hoffenheim and Leverkusen.
He picked the latter for two reasons, with the first being that then-manager Peter Bosz promised him he would throw him straight into the first team.
The other was because he wanted to continue at his Cologne school, which was only 15 miles away from Leverkusen.
Wirtz was an average academic student, doing just about enough to graduate from high school.
But, unsurprisingly, he excelled at sport and was a competent handball player — helped by his mum Karin being a professional coach in the discipline — and gymnast.
Florian’s close relationship with his mother stems back to her attending all his training sessions growing up.
Karin looks after his finances, while Hans handles his contracts.
Wirtz told Sports Illustrated last week: “The sporting perspective is much more important than the money. I think my parents would be angry if I were too fixated on money,
“After I moved to Leverkusen at 16, my parents managed my salary and sent me 150 Euros a month. That shaped me.”
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The star and his girlfriend Aaliyah Mohamed are keen cooks, who are said to mix up the menu every day except for Saturdays when it is almost always boiled potatoes and warm beetroot with horseradish.
But Karin is always on hand to help with any new recipes and also cooked for her boy for a fortnight after Die Mannschaft star did his ACL in March 2022 and could not walk.
Wirtz was still in rehab by the time Spanish manager Alonso, 43, took over at Leverkusen in October 2022.
But the then-teenager showed his leadership skills by travelling home and away to stay connected to the team, even though he could not play.
Wirtz’s influence means, famously, no coach has ever dropped him.
And indeed, former Liverpool star Alonso built his invincible, Double-winning side — the one that denied Harry Kane the Bundesliga title last term — around the youngster.
Wirtz made an electric return from injury, having worked harder than required throughout his recovery.
He netted a hat-trick off the bench to clinch the title in a 5-0 battering of Bremen in April, and was named the league’s player of the season.
Alonso compared Wirtz to the German’s boyhood idol Lionel Messi for how easy he made the game look.
Despite his stellar season, Wirtz never looked close to leaving Leverkusen last summer.
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But 12 months on, he is expected to go and City — also chasing AC Milan midfielder Tijjani Reijnders, 26, and Morgan Gibbs-White, 27, of Nottingham Forest — are right in the mix.
Should he opt for England, he could be joined by his best mate Jeremie Frimpong, 24, who is on Liverpool’s list to replace Trent Alexander-Arnold.
The pair have a shared love of rap music and fashion, while Wirtz is a fan of Mercedes cars.
Bayern feel they are in pole position for Wirtz, with sources in Germany claiming Hans-Joachim prefers the switch, particularly at this stage of his son’s career.
The German giants may have to rejig their formation to fit in Wirtz, though, and there are question marks over how the set-up would work with fellow No 10 Jamal Musiala.
Former City and Bayern midfielder Didi Hamann, 51, claimed: “I have my doubts that it will work with Musiala. Both are central players and want to play there.
“Both of them next to each other at No 10 — that works on the computer, but not in practice.
“One will suffer, maybe even both of them.”
Never discount the pull of Bayern on German players.
But the Prem appeals, as Wirtz himself noted last week by stating his desire to “leave my comfort zone at some point and experience something new”.
Now it’s over to the big guns to battle it out for his signature.
