Florian Wirtz was one of 10 senior players to miss Liverpool’s opening pre-season friendly at Preston, with the club’s record signing left to wait for a first outing.
Some had expected Wirtz to make his unofficial Liverpool debut in Sunday’s trip to Deepdale, but when the team news was announced an hour before kickoff, the German was not in the squad.
Instead the club’s new record signing was one of 10 players left out despite being fit.
That comes with the decision made for those players to instead focus on their fitness with extra sessions at the AXA Training Centre.
Also not involved for this reason were Alisson, Virgil van Dijk, Ibrahima Konate, Alexis Mac Allister, James McConnell, Luis Diaz and Jayden Danns.
Similarly absent were Harvey Elliott and Tyler Morton, who have been granted more time off having only finished their season on June 28 as England won the U21 Euros.
Many of those left out did travel to Preston however in order to join the emotional scenes before and after Liverpool’s 3-1 win – which saw Diogo Jota‘s song on repeat at full-time as Arne Slot and his squad stood and applauded the away end.
Wirtz’s first outing in a Liverpool kit will instead come during the tour of Asia later this month, and likely in the friendly against AC Milan in Hong Kong on July 26.
The Reds are due to fly on July 21, with a further week of training on Merseyside before Slot names his squad for the commercial leg of pre-season.
In the absence of Alisson, Van Dijk, Konate, Mac Allister and Diaz, Slot gave opportunities to a number of new and fringe players from kickoff on Sunday.
Giorgi Mamardashvili made his first appearance in goal while Joe Gomez was partnered at centre-back by academy midfielder Luca Stephenson.
Trey Nyoni joined Ryan Gravenberch and Dominik Szoboszlai in midfield and Federico Chiesa started up front in Diaz’s absence.
It was perhaps notable that Slot did not opt to change his system for Liverpool’s opening friendly of the warmup schedule.
There has been debate over whether the arrival of Wirtz – signed from Bayern Leverkusen for a British record £116 million – would prompt a shift towards a new setup.
But the early signs are that the head coach will retain his 4-3-3 formation with the option of moving to a 4-2-3-1 as he did when Lewis Koumas was one of 11 changes at half-time on Sunday.
