He is isn’t better than any of them and that is before you mention the true GOAT’s at CB below.
Beckenbauer, Baresi, Moore, Koeman, Scirea.
Virgil van Dijk | Performances
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Beckenbauer, Baresi, Moore, Koeman, Scirea.
Not anymore. It's been split again for a few years now
Don't be desperate.
Desperate? He has had less than 2 brilliant seasons, every single player in that list performed at the top for longer.
If VVD played in previous era’s he wouldn’t be anywhere near the best defender. It just so happens that there are not many great centre backs at defending any more.
Come on mate you are 27, you havent been watched backenbauer, baresi, moore, koeman, scirea. Infact you was too little to truly judge how good stam, nesta, maldini and cannavaro were. So you have no right to compare those players to VVD. If you were 50 years old then it would have been totally different thing.
Can confirm that you are correct. Stam & Maldini were a little before my time. I saw Maldini at the end in the CL vs us/Liverpool. I saw Cannavaro & Nesta's prime career though. I was 14 back in 2006 so maybe he saw them too.
He is our best player and I reckon most fans agree. Will almost certainly go down as our best ever defender and we've had some good ones. We realise.
He's pretty fast too. Great recovery pace and I can't recall him losing a foot race. He's simply got everything. Like stam and hyypia rolled into one, with better ball playing ability to boot. Most complete defender I've ever seen. Only caught the tail end of Baresi, but for me he's up there with Nesta. Besides being as hard to play against as anyone in any kind of duel, he is so often there to clean up balls that aren't necessarily his to deal with. He does everything really.
If VVD gets the next balon of frigging gold, then Maldini, Baresi, Ramos, Puyol, Piqué, Blanc, Terry, Ferdinand, etc. should have won it as well.
Baresi was runner up once to van Basten, Maldini 3rd on two occasions.
I am not sure. Today there are much more included in the role for a CB. Maybe he wouldn't be one the greatest 20 years ago, but most likely some of the CB who are considered best of all time, would not be the best today.
Defending has changed massively in the past decade. You just have to look at the stats. They have far fewer duels and challenges these days than they used to, the ball is moved too fast for that.
Exactly what VVD deserves.
Messi deserves it imo. He probably should have won many more than he has already. The problem is that by now he has set his own standards so high that when he scores 51 goals and 22 assists in 50 games like he did last season people take it for granted. If any other player on the planet played like Messi did last season there would be no discussion at all about who deserved this award.
Ribery/Robben didn't win it in 2013, so why should VVD now?
Ribery would have won it had it been journalists-only like it used to be and is now again.
Agreed, which is why it’s almost impossible to compare across generations given the game is completely different. Having said that, I think Rio would’ve still been great in this generation, whereas Terry may have struggled a bit more.
I haven’t watched VvD as much as you I’m sure, but I get the feeling he is quite close to Rio in terms of playing style.
He should have won because of how cute he is.
it was an innocuous comment but given everything she preaches she really should have realised how that would come across.
Im happy there's at least one other person on this planet that knows Ramos is an overrated tit.
This might sound like a joke to most but I just can't remember a CB as complete as VVD in the last 30 years.
Who the fck has this kind of ability, speed, strength, pure air dominance, composure and reads the game this well?
Most people are arguing against him only cause of his trophy haul that is pretty empty compared to most legends.
Then there are people that say Pique is better than him. In 20 years VVD is still going to be better than Pique at his peak with absolute ease.
Who the fck has this kind of ability, speed, strength, pure air dominance, composure and reads the game this well?
Most people are arguing against him only cause of his trophy haul that is pretty empty compared to most legends.
Then there are people that say Pique is better than him. In 20 years VVD is still going to be better than Pique at his peak with absolute ease.
The problem some people are having with VVD is that he's very much a 'Johnny come lately' in terms of the world-class player status. He's certainly someone who's basically slipped under the radar for many years & exploded into life when he joined Liverpool at the age of 26. Most of the great players he's compared to were all probably well established in the game by then & would have had a bucket full of medals at that age. So I suppose it's understandable in a way why folk find it difficult to comprehend how this bloke can come from nowhere & suddenly be thrust into the limelight. It's almost as if it's being disrespectful to the great defenders of the past that he's being put into their category, when at this moment in time, he's achieved very little in terms of success in relation to what others have done. But as someone who went to his first Liverpool match when I was 9 years old back in 1966, I can honestly say that this guy is head & shoulders above any centre-back I've ever seen in a Liverpool shirt (& I've seen some good ones believe me). So for anyone wanting to play down his undoubted ability because of the lack of time he's been playing with the big boys, you'd do well to remember that Bryan Robson won far less medals than a lot of other midfielders I could mention. Yet there's not many who'd argue that he wasn't an all time great, both for club, & country.
Are you saying a 48 year old VVD would be better than Pique at his peak? With absolute ease?
I wont get into who is great defender or not but ramos and pique are over-rated defenders and dont belong in the list of greatest defenders ever. These clowns couldnt get world cup and euro winners spain out of the group stage of world cup. Carlos Puyol was the one who made them look good.
Pique has lost 3-0 first leg lead twice in period of two years in champions league. Ramos has conceded s**t load of goals in last 3 season. It was ronaldo who use to keep them in the games. If these two are as good as people make them to be then their clubs shouldnt have had such meltdowns.
Pique has lost 3-0 first leg lead twice in period of two years in champions league. Ramos has conceded s**t load of goals in last 3 season. It was ronaldo who use to keep them in the games. If these two are as good as people make them to be then their clubs shouldnt have had such meltdowns.
There have been some egregious comments in this here thread but this one takes the cake
Im happy there's at least one other person on this planet that knows Ramos is an overrated tit.
Repent!
That's a good post and I do agree with you that VVD's relatively late emergence and short tenure at the absolute top level are counting against him here. He's clearly an exceptionally good centre-back, but when people are claiming that he's the best CB in Premier League history then there's inevitably going to be a backlash. As good as he is, he hasn't elevated himself above the likes of Rio, Vidic, Terry and Carvalho yet IMO, or even creaky old Paul McGrath with his late-career brilliance.
The most comparable to me is Nesta, although he wasn't as physical.
But the defending back then was different. More man to man, dirty trick defending. Nobody really focused on playing from the back.
Let's just say VVD is more adapted to this reality and back then there were players better adapted to the other reality.
Not saying he's bad, but definitely overrated. He's in the FIFA's best XI this year for feck's sake. He single handedly eliminated his team in the round of 16 by purposefully picking up a yellow away against Ajax and Real were shite in the League. Did they even come in 2nd?There have been some egregious comments in this here thread but this one takes the cake
Repent!
After single-handedly saving our arses from losing 6-0 in amsterdam. I mean, the moment he wasn't on the pitch we fell to pieces
Now granted, his inclusion in that farce of a best XI was mad, but he was still one of the top 5-6 CBs in the world last season. One of our few players who's performance didn't collapse completely. The guy's been having to defend an entire 4th of the pitch by himself for years and done a pretty fecking good job at it. No other CB in the world is asked to do as much as him on a regular basis. Not surprisingly the moment we fall back into a deep block he generally turns into a wall. And that's not even including his offensive contributions, like being a shadow DLP, oh and also, he's been scoring massive goals for years whenever we needed him to
That's all well and good, but you're missing an important point. He's a twat and I don't like him, therefore he's overrated :P
Seriously though, yes, he is world class, but he's making lists of greatest ever along side the likes of Baresi and that's pushing it. He's a solid defender and a goalscoring thread, but he's also prone to losing his head, which is evident by all the yellow and red card records he's been breaking in his career.
He’s an excellent centre half, slightly overrated? Maybe, but people never seem to factor in how hard it is to defend with absolutely no protection and as a Liverpool fan I watched our defenders do it for years and get lambasted. Now mind you Real always had an excellent keeper and Ronaldo so it was still masked somewhat but that’s not to take away from how good Ramos has been over the years. He wouldn’t be questioned half as much if he played for a more defensive side like the older incarnations of Juve and Atletico.
I don't think the strength of Ramos era Madrid has been conceding few goals though has it? It's been having a dude up front who scores about 3 a game. As for Spain, it's not that hard to defend if your team has 98.7% of possession.
But yeah, he's excellent but overrated. Overrated doesn't mean good or bad, just rated higher than I think is fair. Then again, it's just, like, my opinion man.
As a Barca fan I agree. These 2 are overrated as feck. Pique has been riding the Puyol wave for a decade now and Ramos the headless chicken is a great apparently because he scored a couple times in the last minute.
Yes.
In that case I don’t know how good Maradona or Best were. Just because I didn’t watch a player live doesn’t mean I don’t know how good they were. The players mentioned for a start, I have watched countless clips and archives of. I enjoy watching historical games and clips, which I do often. Even without watching clips etc, the stats and honours they won are also available. I have also read a lot about what these players brought to their teams etc.
I can’t say Beckenbauer is better than Titus Bramble because I wasn’t alive when Beckenbauer was playing...
It was, when we needed it to be actually
No, it's wrong and you will burn for it
His career highlight.
Agree on his top tier credentials - likes of him, Kompany and Terry will invariably be a little under-appreciated on here by virtue of who they played for.
In terms of elite centre-halves over the last 30 years, Nesta, Desailly, Thiago Silva and Kohler (not quite as smooth on the ball but still pretty decent) were all very complete and it would be hard to identify any obvious weaknesses in the attributes they brought to the table.
This is unfair. Edit: you're dutch and a feyenoord fan. At this point you're basically dead inside. I can't banter with that
His career highlight.
It's true, we got mauled by Stevie-G's semi pro Rangers team last week. Bashing actual football players is all that's left for meThis is unfair. Edit: you're dutch and a feyenoord fan. At this point you're basically dead inside. I can't banter with that