Florian Wirtz is a jewel of German football and was central to Bayer Leverkusen’s unbeaten domestic double last season, winning the Bundesliga’s player of the year award. Alongside Bayern Munich’s Jamal Musiala, he has become the great hope of Julian Nagelsmann’s national team, too, and will be fundamental to Germany’s challenge at the 2026 World Cup.

His contract runs until 2027, so there is no obligation to sell but considering his close relationship with in-demand head coach Xabi Alonso, there will come a point when Wirtz, who joined Leverkusen from Koln in 2020, may also look elsewhere.

He belongs at the top of the game but his path depends on which club is willing to meet Leverkusen’s €150million (£125m; $159m) asking price. They will not get that, but the figure represents how highly Wirtz is valued.

Fernando Carro, the club’s CEO, believes he might stay beyond this season.

Seb Stafford-Bloor

What else do I need to know about him?

There’s an enigmatic quiet to him. He is understandably laconic, given the attention he receives in the German media, but is also extremely popular within the Leverkusen dressing room and fashion-conscious off the pitch, too, looking like someone on the way back from a Stone Roses gig.

Wirtz has been a star for a long time. In his early teens, there were stories of a tiny boy at Koln who might be the country’s finest talent in years. The hype was justified. What happened next, however, created acrimony that lasts to this day.

When he was progressing through Koln’s youth teams, a gentlemen’s agreement existed between several clubs in the area — Koln, Leverkusen, Borussia Monchengladbach and Fortuna Dusseldorf among them — stipulating that, for the betterment of the region, they would not poach each other’s youth players.

After he turned 17, Wirtz’s youth contract at Koln expired. The player’s parents wanted him to finish his schooling and stay close to home, so he joined Leverkusen for €300,000. His new club felt he was fair game — a senior, rather than a youth player. Koln believed differently, claiming their local rivals had violated the agreement.

Max Eberl, Gladbach’s sporting director at the time (and now Bayern’s board member for sport), was critical of Leverkusen’s conduct but Carro, who remains Leverkusen’s CEO, defended his club.

Old news, perhaps, but among Bayern’s transfer targets is — inevitably — Wirtz, which would involve a prickly negotiation.

Will he go there? Most likely not. Musiala’s contract extension is Bayern’s priority. Given the strength of his relationship with Alonso and how good his form has been under him, the smart money might be on them taking their next steps together.

Seb Stafford-Bloor

Tell me about how he plays…

On the pitch, his control, dribbling ability and creative prowess make him one of the world’s most exciting players. He can weave his way past defenders but also find team-mates with one-twos, precise passes and through balls while his off-the-ball movement and positioning regularly put him in areas to score and create.

Across his short senior career, he has featured across the front line and as a No 10. This versatility allowed Nagelsmann to successfully play him and Musiala together at Euro 2024.

Under Alonso, Wirtz’s defensive work has improved too, and he has been willing to put the hard yards in to lead Leverkusen’s press. Wirtz has lifted the floor for playing behind the striker but arguably has not reached his ceiling — that, more than anything, is a frightening prospect.

Anantaajith Raghuraman

Picture this; the reigning champion Los Angeles Dodgers are down to their final out, and with the bottom of the lineup at the plate, Shohei Ohtani is not due up for quite some time … or is he?

Well, Major League Baseball is floating the idea of a new quirk where Ohtani, already in the lineup, may come up earlier than he is supposed to.

Commissioner Rob Manfred said on “The Varsity” podcast back in October that league owners have shared “a little buzz” about the “Golden At-Bat” rule, and it seems to be gaining some traction ahead of the Winter Meetings.

So, what is it?

Each team would get just one chance to basically bring up whoever they want to the plate.

Say the Dodgers are down a run and down to their final out, Miguel Rojas is up, Chris Taylor is on deck and Ohtani is in the hole.

Well, Dave Roberts can use his Golden At-Bat to bring in the National League MVP (maybe the New York Yankees with Alex Verdugo and Juan Soto is a bit of a better example, since everyone on the Dodgers can hit).

The Athletic reported that there are several variations being floated around, including only using it past the seventh inning or only using it in the ninth.

Major League Baseball Commissioner Robert D. Manfred Jr. speaks to the media during the Spring Training Cactus League Media Day at Arizona Biltmore on Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2023 in Phoenix. (Daniel Shirey/MLB Photos via Getty Images)

SHOHEI OHTANI SEEKS $325K WORTH OF BASEBALL CARDS FROM HIS EX-INTERPRETER

Nonetheless, it would arguably be the most significant rule change the game has seen in recent years.

Ahead of the 2023 season, MLB introduced larger bases, a pitch timer, limiting shifts and a “disengagement” rule where pitchers would only be allowed three attempted pickoffs, but the third failed one would result in the runner moving up 90 feet.

While baseball purists might be disgusted yet again, it is hard to argue that the rule changes have been a negative for baseball.

The average nine-inning game in the 2024 regular season was two hours and 36 minutes, the lowest since 1984, and no, it is not less baseball; it is less downtime in the game. There were also 3,617 stolen bases this season, the most since 1915.

MLB parlayed that into its highest attendance since 2017, despite prices throughout the ballpark being higher than ever.

Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred speaks during a news conference after negotiations with the players’ association toward a labor deal on Tuesday, March 1, 2022 at Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter, Florida. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

So, while the purists may not like it, it is clearly working, and it would be a lot more fun to see Bobby Witt at the plate instead of Kyle Isbel in the ninth – perhaps even twice!

Follow Fox News Digital’s sports coverage on X, and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.

To truly understand how far the Galaxy have come in reaching the MLS Cup final on Saturday, you first must know where they started.

The Galaxy headed into last season having lost more games than they’d won since 2017. They’d made the playoffs twice in six seasons and had gone a team-record nine years without playing in the league championship game.

Once the model franchise in MLS, the Galaxy had become a dysfunctional mess. And it didn’t look like things would be getting better any time soon.

So when the Galaxy announced that Chris Klein, who presided over that free fall as the team’s president for a decade, had been given a contract extension, Andrew Alesana had seen enough. The team already had his money — he’d recently renewed the season ticket he had had since 2007 — but it would no longer have his support.

So just before the start of the 2023 season Alesana, president of the LA Riot Squad, joined with three of the team’s other main supporters groups to organize a boycott, promising to stay away from games until changes in the front office were made.

And guess what? It worked.

Will Kuntz, who would become the architect of the team’s turnaround, was hired three months later, Klein was sacked a month after that and after rebuilding the front office, the Galaxy quickly rebuilt their roster. The result was one of the most dramatic turnarounds in MLS history.

After winning just eight games in 2023, the Galaxy matched a modern-era record with 19 victories this season. After finishing in the penultimate spot in the Western Conference standing last season, the Galaxy tied for the top spot this season, becoming the first team since 2011 to go from second to last in the conference to the MLS Cup in one season.

And it all started when the fans went on strike.

“It’s crazy where we’ve come from in a year,” Alesana said. “I definitely take some pride in the team being as successful as they are.”

So does Mark Villa, a season-ticket holder since the first game in Carson in 2004.

“My kids grew up in this stadium,” he said. “The last eight seasons have been difficult to slog through as a fan. But seeing this revival really does start to make up for it.”

Villa said supporting the boycott was a difficult but necessary decision — and one that forced AEG, the Galaxy’s parent company, to listen.

“They already had our money. That’s all they care about,” he said. “The media scrutiny brought by the boycott grew to a point where [AEG] could no longer hide from it.”

Nor could they ignore the planes circling the stadium calling for the firing of Klein and technical director Jovan Kirovski. Or the empty seats and the boos that cascaded down after games. Seventeen months later some AEG officials admit privately that the boycott influenced their thinking and might have accelerated changes that were already being contemplated.

In other words, the fans were heard.

“The Galaxy became mediocre and the fans got fed up with that. They demanded that there be change,” said ESPN commentator Hérculez Gómez, who won an MLS Cup with the Galaxy in 2005. “If this pressure didn’t exist AEG would have just gone on and the Galaxy wouldn’t be in the position it is today.

“I don’t think change happens if these fans don’t take matters into their own hands.”

One immediate result of those changes was that Dignity Health Sports Park became a fortress again. Only two teams in MLS won fewer games at home than the Galaxy last season; this year the Galaxy were unbeaten there in 20 games in all competitions. Ten of those games were sellouts, helping the Galaxy break the franchise single-season attendance record.

If AEG learned nothing else, they learned that if they build a winner, the fans will come — or in some cases, come back.

“It really means a lot for the players,” winger Joseph Paintsil said. “The crowd, the people shouting, making noise. It gives us the energy to push for them, because they came for us.”

“Of course you notice,” Gómez added. “And you know, who else notices? The opponents. When you’re loud, when you can make your presence felt, the opponent notices. And they notice that the home team is feeding off that.”

Other ownership groups should also notice. Because if a boycott can work in Southern California, it can work in San José, where the Earthquakes haven’t had a winning season in 11 years. Or Washington, where D.C. United hasn’t won a playoff game since 2015. Or Chicago, where the Fire has made the postseason just twice since its last playoff victory in 2009.

“I definitely think other teams’ fans should look at this as an example,” Alesana said. “If people stopped showing for games, they can affect their ownership.”

As a former Galaxy player, Gómez has a different take. For him, the turnaround this season in Carson was personal. And he’s happy the fans see it the same way.

“When you go through the Galaxy, it’s once a G, always a G,” he said. “There are clubs that you go through in your career, there are fan bases that you come across, that seem to always remember, seem to somehow hold on to the past. There’s something to be said about that.”

“It’s special because not many places around the world have that,” he added. “It wasn’t too long ago that the Galaxy was the only team you spoke about when you spoke about a super club. It lost that, and now it’s regaining that, and people love it.”

Especially the people who boycotted the team to make it happen.

⚽ You have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and shines a spotlight on unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week’s episode of the “Corner of the Galaxy” podcast.