Florian Wirtz was harshly denied his first Premier League goal on Wednesday night after Liverpool\u2019s 81st-minute equaliser against Sunderland was officially ruled an own goal.<\/p>\n
The summer signing from Bayer Leverkusen \u2014 whose deal could rise to \u00a3116 million \u2014 looked set to finally get off the mark after going 17 league matches without scoring.<\/p>\n
With nine minutes left, Wirtz collected a pass from Curtis Jones and weaved his way through the Sunderland box. After a clever touch to beat Dan Ballard, it appeared he had scored at last, and even the Sky commentators believed the ball was his.<\/p>\n
However, moments later the Premier League announced that the goal had been credited as a Mukiele own goal.<\/p>\n
Wirtz only learned of the decision after full-time when a Sky reporter broke the news during his interview. The moment was slightly awkward, but after pausing, he brushed it off: \u201cIt doesn’t matter for me. We drew. We wanted to win \u2014 that\u2019s what counts today. Unlucky.\u201d<\/p>\n
Curtis Jones, standing beside him, was visibly upset for his teammate. \u201cFlo always wants the ball,\u201d he said. \u201cHe worked so hard. It\u2019s just a shame it goes down as an own goal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reflecting on his early months at Liverpool, Wirtz said he has settled in well: \u201cThe team welcomed me from the start. I\u2019m very happy to be here. The last few weeks have been tough, but we\u2019re working hard to get back on track.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to win games and be at the top of the table. We just have to keep going and hopefully things will turn.\u201d<\/p>\n
Liverpool remain eighth in the league with seven wins from 14 and now prepare to face Leeds on Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Florian Wirtz was harshly denied his first Premier League goal on Wednesday night after Liverpool\u2019s 81st-minute equaliser against Sunderland was officially ruled an own goal. The summer signing from Bayer Leverkusen \u2014 whose deal could rise to \u00a3116 million \u2014 looked set to finally get off the mark after going 17 league matches without scoring. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":56177,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/resize-64.webp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56176"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56178,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56176\/revisions\/56178"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/56177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}