FLO'S RIDER

As a kid, Liverpool record signing Wirtz snubbed Ronaldo and Messi shirts...he wanted a Marco Marin jersey

- BY SIMON MULLOCK

FLORIAN WIRTZ will be hoping to have a bigger impact on the Premier League in Liverpool red than his boyhood hero Marko Marin did wearing Chelsea blue.

The champions' British record signing grew up idolising Marin when he first started showing his potential playing alongside older boys at Grun-Weiss Brauweiler, the junior club on the outskirts of Cologne where his dad and agent Hans-Joachim is chairman.

When Germany international Marin (below) moved to Stamford Bridge from Werder Bremen in the summer of 2012 in a deal worth £6.5million (€10m), big things were expected of him.

But he made just two Premier League starts for the Londoners and was loaned out to Sevilla, Fiorentina, Anderlecht and Trabzonspor before joining Olympiakos four years later.