Speed is one of the most important aspects of Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool. The German’s gegenpressing philosophy relies on having players who are capable of playing at a high intensity and high speed levels. That’s why Liverpool are so good at sweeping past the opposition in quick transitions.
Over the years, Klopp’s side has had plenty of players with immense sprinting abilities. From the explosiveness of Mohamed Salah during the beginning of his days at Anfield to Sadio Mane. Even now though there are plenty of players who are capable of reaching top speeds.
Darwin Nunez is up there as one of the fastest players in European football. His speed is frightening to any defender. Dominik Szoboszlai has also recently been clocked in as one of the fastest players in the Premier League. But according to Cody Gakpo, there’s someone else who is even faster than the two of them in Liverpool’s team.
Cody Gakpo on Luis Diaz
Speaking on the Carabao Cup’s Twitter channel, Cody Gakpo was asked alongside Curtis Jones, who the fastest player at Liverpool was. This sparked a little bit of a debate between the two Liverpool teammates.
Jones claimed that it was Darwin Nunez. But according to Gakpo it’s actually Luis Diaz.
“The fastest Lucho. The numbers don’t lie,” Gakpo said. “Darwin is really fast, obviously, but the numbers don’t lie.”
The fact that there was no straight answer between Jones and Gakpo is encouraging. It just demonstrates how many players Liverpool have who are capable of running at top speeds. We’ve definitely seen both Nunez and Diaz explode at times over their Liverpool careers.
When they’re running at full flow both of them are very difficult to stop. Though we would have probably predicted that Nunez was the fastest out of the two of them. Even if Diaz also looks extremely fast on the ball.
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