He may be wondering whether the right career call was made, as heading to Madrid alongside former Leverkusen coach Xabi Alonso would have presented him with a different kind of challenge. That is one that Carro claims the 22-year-old was willing to take on.
The CEO has told Sport1 of Leverkusen’s efforts to keep the homegrown star on their books for at least 12 more months: “The Wirtz family and Florian knew that extending his contract was our top priority. We were very cautious with salaries during the summer transfers. But we would have been prepared to make an exception for Florian. We were prepared to push the boundaries and give everything to extend his contract. And for a while, it looked like it might work out. In the end, Florian decided for himself what he wanted to do. The parents are his advisors, and I think it’s good that they fully respect Florian’s wishes.”
Carro added on Real’s appeal to Wirtz, with the highly-rated playmaker eager to compete for European glory, and why an offer from the Spanish capital never materialised: “He’s someone who wants to win the Champions League. We thought that with this team we would have been capable of going further than we did. He saw that we had won the Bundesliga title, but winning the Champions League with Bayer Leverkusen might be more difficult.
“He would definitely have gone to Madrid if Xabi had made the offer. But Xabi has less say at Madrid than he does with us. One of Alonso’s greatest strengths was his ability to work with our scouting department to define who needed to be in our team. Florentino Perez decides the transfers, not Xabi Alonso.”