Trent Alexander-Arnold made a massive claim about Liverpool teammate Virgil van Dijk being amongst the best ever. He rates the Dutchman as high as he possibly can.
Trent Alexander-Arnold recently sat down for an interview with TalkSPORT, where they asked him for his World Cup 5-a-side. Unsurprisingly, he names two Liverpool players in there.
Alisson Becker gets the nod in goal, while Virgil van Dijk is in defence. Kevin De Bruyne, Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappé make up the rest of the side.
But it’s his comments on Van Dijk that raise eyebrows. Alexander-Arnold couldn’t really hold his teammate in higher regard.
“I’m going to have to go Virg because for me, he’s the best defender in the world and will go down in history as one of the best,” he said. “One of the best.
“He is, I would probably say, the most talented player I’ve shared the pitch with. He’s that good.”
Virgil van Dijk – the best ever
Now, given Alexander-Arnold later calls Messi ‘the best player ever’, we think he means teammates by ‘shared a pitch with’. He has played against the Argentine, after all.
Still, it’s a massive claim. Alexander-Arnold has played with the likes of Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mané and Alisson Becker, after all – a trio who will go down as all-time greats. Thiago, too, is something special and the England squad isn’t exactly short of talent.
But really, we’d agree with him. Van Dijk is something else – a player who has comfortably looked like the world’s best defender for years now. He’s been so utterly dominant that we wouldn’t have even considered swapping him for a second.
That kind of talent is rare to find and Van Dijk will go down as one of the absolute best we’ve seen at Liverpool. And in all honesty, one of the best defenders England has seen, too.
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