Manchester City had to find an alternative after plans to sign Florian Wirtz broke down but have moved swiftly and with familiarity
Kevin De Bruyne with Phil Foden and Jack Grealish
Kevin De Bruyne with Phil Foden and Jack Grealish(Image: 2025 UEFA)
How do you replace Kevin De Bruyne? Many would say you can't, but Manchester City have to.
Florian Wirtz was Plan A, the Leverkusen star seen as the closest City could get to a successor to the legendary Belgian who will be immortalised outside the Etihad after winning everything with the club. However, the Blues pulled out last month with Liverpool expected to sign him instead.
Whether you believe City thought the deal was too expensive for Wirtz or were told that he preferred a move elsewhere is pretty moot, with the reality that for the last three weeks Hugo Viana and Txiki Begiristain have been working on an alternative. As that comes to fruition, it looks much more like a City solution than Wirtz did.
It's easy to say that, and could be seen as sour grapes. Wirtz definitely fits into the bracket of young, top talent that can become the best in the world in his position that City have been so good at signing in the Pep Guardiola era.
Yet the price tag is not what the Blues are used to. Jack Grealish aside, City are much more comfortable shopping in the £50-£70m market for their premium buys; even Josko Gvardiol, at £78m, was still less than the fee City refused to pay for Harry Maguire four years earlier.
When you consider Grealish as well, his cost is something that he has spoken before about weighing on him. “Especially the price tag on my head, as soon as you don’t get them goals and assists for a while people start talking and doubting you then," he said months after his move. “That’s where you need to trust in my own ability and take it from there.”
Erling Haaland arriving a year later and telling Grealish there was no pressure on him because he had only cost the club half of what they had paid for the former Villa man was undoubtedly funny, yet you wonder how easy it was for Grealish to shift. He is right that his price has never been far from any conversations about him, and most conversations for the last two years have been about him not playing regularly.
Wirtz may be better equipped to cope with that - time should tell soon enough at Anfield - but the mantle of being De Bruyne's successor would not have been light on top of the record price, with every performance compared with one of the greatest to have ever been in the game. Add in the fact that City struggled as a team last season and the pressure on one individual would have been a lot.
Instead, Tijjani Reijnders and Rayan Cherki will look to provide a spark for the collective. Everyone dropped the ball last season and it is now up to everyone, including a sprinkling of new signings, to change the narrative.
City will still spend a lot of money in this window and Wirtz may go on to be excellent value for money, but this feels like more of a City solution to a problem that seems impossible but that they have had to go through several times before.
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