FLORIAN TO MAKE HIS ANFIELD MARKO

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.

- By Simon Mullock

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 Hans-Joachim acts as both the chairman and his youngest son’s agent.

When the Bosnia-born German international moved to Stamford Bridge from Werder Bremen in the summer of 2012 in a deal worth £6.5million, 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 three years later.

Marin was a hugely talented attacking midfielder playing his best football with Bremen when Bundesliga rivals FC Koln launched a charm offensive to sign the precocious seven-year-old Wirtz in 2010.

Club officials wanted to present him with a shirt bearing the name of his favourite player - and were stunned when the youngster name-checked Marin rather than Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi or German star Mesut Ozil.

He still treasures the jersey.