Liverpool legend John Arne Riise has praised central defender Virgil van Dijk to the hilt after the Reds beat Tottenham Hotspur in the Premier League.
Van Dijk was immense as Jurgen Klopp’s men came away from London with an important 2-1 win in the bag.
Goals from Georginio Wijnaldum, his first away strike in his entire EPL career, and Roberto Firmino proved to be too much for Spurs. Erik Lamela hit a late consolation for the home side, who should have been blown away by then.
And Riise took to Twitter after the game to tell the world how much he loves van Dijk, who he labeled as the best in the world. Check out what he said in the tweet below!
Interestingly, statistics website WhoScored.com didn’t think the central defender had a very good game. They only rated van Dijk’s performance as a 6.5, while handing Joe Gomez a 7.0 for his efforts against Harry Kane and co. This just goes to show stats don’t show the full story, and sometimes it takes a good old fashioned pair of eyes to fill in the gaps.
Klopp reverted back to his regular midfield and dropped Jordan Henderson to the substitutes bench. The German has opted against rotating his squad around in the league and Saturday was no different as new players like Xherdan Shaqiri and Fabinho had to sit this one out again.
With a game against Paris Saint Germain on Tuesday, a few might have expected the gaffer to make some changes and keep a few legs fresh. That’s clearly not his style for 2018/2019 and it’ll be interesting to see what side Klopp goes with during the week.
The best CB in the world is @VirgilvDijk 👏🏻⚽️ The difference he has made since he came. So calm. Can play. Strong in the air. Power! Pure power! Big fan! And he wasn’t worth the money😂 Bet every club wished they had him now 🕺🔝
— John Arne Riise (@JARiiseOfficial) September 15, 2018
But whoever is picked, one thing is for sure: van Dijk is going to play until his legs fall off and he can’t run anymore. But knowing the giant Dutchman, that won’t happen any time soon.