No he wasn't. With the same age (22) Dias already had many more games than Lindelof for the first team, and in terms of leadership it wasn't even close, the only thing where Lindelof stood out more than Dias was on his technical ability (compared to Dias), and maybe Lindelof had capacity to do more than one position on the field. There is no one who follows youth football who will tell you Lindelof was better. And I don't think Lindelof is as bad as you read here in the forum, but it's understandable coming from fans who followed Rio, Vidic, Stam, etc, compared to those he looks bad of course.