Conor Bradley jokes he'll tell Liverpool star to 'take it easy' on Northern Ireland in World Cup qualifier
Northern Ireland’s Conor Bradley has joked he’ll be messaging Liverpool team-mate Florian Wirtz “to take it easy on us” in Sunday’s 2026 World Cup qualifier against Germany.
Wirtz joined Bradley at Anfield in a bumper £100million deal from Bayer Leverkusen during the summer.
The 22-year-old played 90 minutes for Germany on Thursday evening as the Group A favourites fell to a shock 2-0 defeat in Slovakia while Bradley starred in his country’s 3-1 victory over Luxembourg.
Michael O’Neill’s side face the toughest test of their qualifying campaign with a trip to Cologne against a German side seeking to bounce back.
Bradley will be able to give his international team-mates a unique insight into the qualities of Wirtz and admits banter has already been flowing ahead of the fixture.
"It's going to be another difficult game but looking forward to it,” Bradley told BBC Sport NI. “We (Bradley and Wirtz) had a few jokes before we went away, not Whatsapps yet but I'll have to get into him tomorrow and tell him to take it easy on us!
"He's an unbelievable player. I've seen that from the few weeks we've had together in pre-season, and we'll have to keep him quiet Sunday night."
Thursday’s victory in Luxembourg marked Bradley’s first start since he recovered from a hamstring injury which forced him to miss the opening weeks of Liverpool’s season.
The 22-year-old has seen minutes at club level limited with the emergence of Dominik Szoboszlai as a right-back option under Arne Slot, but Bradley was delighted to help his country to an important win as they seek to end a 40-year World Cup wait.
"It's my first big minutes of the season after the little injury in pre-season so it was a tough night, but delighted with the victory, I thought we played really well at times," he added. "We started the first half really quick, and it was the same second half.
"Michael had a little bit of a go at us at half-time, it wasn't good enough, rightly so, but we came out all guns blazing second half.
"I think we made it difficult for ourselves, we could have played better but second half I think we played some good stuff, and it obviously helped when they went down to 10 men, it made it a bit easier from there and it is nice to get a 3-1 win, its brilliant for us."