Florian Wirtz will wear the number 58 in his first pre-season appearance for Liverpool while the club wait on the Adidas deal to kick in.
In football, with its short off season and a calendar that includes a laundry list of action in various competitions through the northern hemisphere summer months more often than not, pre-season always seems to come a little before you’re ready for it.
This summer that feels doubly true as Liverpool prepare for their first summer friendly ahead of the 2025-26 season. And if you’re thinking it’s just you feeling like it’s coming way too soon this summer, Liverpool’s kit supplier and shirt number situation say hello.
Namely, Liverpool remain under contract with Nike through the end of the month, so they will start pre-season wearing last season’s kit before switching to Adidas on August 1st. With that as background, their new signings will be wearing temporary numbers.
When the club didn’t announce the numbers Jeremie Frimpong, Florian Wirtz, and Milos Kerkez would be wearing, any thoughts one off them might be waiting for a number to open up soon shifted to recognizing the kit situation probably had a little to do with it.
After all, the club—and any other retail channel—only have access to leftover supplies of old Nike kits to sell at this stage. Which would rather put a damper in selling shirts of their new signings. And those new signings are set to play their first friendly for the Reds.
The club has announced temporary numbers for all as a result, with record signing Wirtz set to don Ben Woodburn’s historic (not so much, sorry, Ben) 58 kit today while Frimpong puts on the 59 and Kerkez dons 57. All will get new numbers. Likely on August 1st.
In full, the shirt numbers for the players not already assigned first team numbers today are: