by Oliver Trust

BERLIN, Sept. 20 (Xinhua) -- There are times when Florian Wirtz regrets having done a meanwhile famous so-called "potato video".

The 21-year-old's culinarian preferences, talking about all sorts of potato dishes, went through the ceiling on social media channels. "It's sometimes a bit much everyone asking me about potatoes," the 21-year-old Bayer Leverkusen midfielder said.

From his perspective, he just loves potatoes, and that's it. No big deal as he says. The gifted German international prefers to talk about sportive issues.

His two goals in the UEFA Champions League encounter against Feyenoord might help to get things back on track.

While the side of the Spanish star coach Xabi Alonso crushed its Dutch opponent 4-0, it was on the youngster to dominate the game and end up as player of the match.

"Flo is doing Flo-Things," Leverkusen keeper Lukas Hardecky said after the club's most courted player became the first German to score twice in his first Champions League encounter.

"It didn't look like he had never played in that competition before," the Slovakian keeper added.

Having missed the club's six Champions League games in the 2022 season due to a knee injury, it was "Wirtz time" in the Netherlands, not to speak of the record-setting achievements before.

In a friendly against France in March 2023 he scored the fastest goal in German national team history after eight seconds.

At the 2024 UEFA Euro, he scored as Germany's youngest Euro scorer against Scotland. At the 2024 UEFA under-21 Euro, his scoring against the Netherlands after 29 seconds was the fastest goal in the history of the campaign.

The youngest in Leverkusen to make his first flight debut is in his records as well as scoring against Bayern in the national league in June 2020 as the sides' youngest scorer.

Having triggered the interest of leading European clubs in Germany, Spain, and England, the Champions League seems the next important step. His price tag is rated at over 100 million euros.

Heading for a great career "one has to play Champions League," he said in advance of the 2024/25 season. "And I want to become a great player."

It seems undoubted that the youngster is going to make it up to the very top. Next to Bayern's genius Jamal Musiala, Wirtz is the face of the German national team's future.

According to media reports, it is more than a bold guess, that Wirtz will sooner or later turn up in the shirt of one of the European top dogs.

Former Arsenal midfielder and Leverkusen conductor Granit Xhaka praised his efforts "as I have rarely seen a player work as hard as he does."

Like Musiala, Wirtz is a representative of a young generation living far away from scandals, parties, yellow press breaking news, and all sorts of usually with youngsters-connected excurses.

While some call both "talents of the century", Leverkusen sporting director and former German international Simon Rolfes called the Champions League "a competition made like for him." Enditem

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