International breaks are dead space for content creators and they often lead to pointless conversations, meaningless social media polls and utterly atrocious takes.
Recently discussions have focused around who the early front runner for Footballer of the Year might be. The Footballer of the Year discourse is often odd, and always tinged with bias.
Let’s take last season for example, Phil Foden swept the board despite not being the best player in his own team across the course of the season. That Rodri was overlooked for each and every award is outrageous. The Spaniard was outstanding for City throughout the season, and his true value was seen by their struggles when he was absent.
It’s not the first time an English player has been handed an award over a superior overseas player, Jordan Henderson winning over Sadio Mane in 2020 remains laughable, while Raheem Sterling being chosen as FWA Footballer of the Year over Virgil Van Dijk in 2019 was just as egregious.
The Hype Around Cole Palmer
Social media will try to tell you that Cole Palmer is the “clear” frontrunner for the award this season, and a quick glance at his production might fool you into believing that. Palmer has six goals and five assists in the Premier League through seven games.
But a slightly deeper dive reveals a more telling story. Of his 11 goals and assists, eight came in two games. He filled his boots against Wolves and Brighton, but has struggled to make an impact in other games.
It’s also worth pointing out that goals and assists don’t necessarily reflect performance level. Call it the Erling Haaland effect. Players can have terrible games, but by scoring a goal they will often be praised for having a good outing.
The True Measure of Excellence
The best way to watch football and properly judge players is to watch games without the goals. That takes away much of the bias that goes in favour of attackers, particularly when it comes to awards.
While Rodri should have won the awards last season, all of them, the one player who did have a real case for receiving them if the Spaniard wasn’t to be honoured was not Phil Foden but Virgil Van Dijk.
The Dutch colossus remains the best defender in the Premier League by a considerable margin. He has put an end to any and all doubts about his historic greatness, with his longevity atop the Premier League mountain unmatched.
No defender in league history can match Van Dijk’s tally of six seasons as the best defender in the league. That two of those seasons came at Southampton show his true greatness.
His combination of aerial dominance, brilliance in 1v1 situations, reading of the game, elite pace, unmatched strength and flawless timing make him the perfect defender. Add in his exceptional passing ability and the threat he carries at set-pieces, and there’s simply never been anyone like him.
Overcoming Challenges
Since his arrival in the league, there have only been three seasons where he has not been the best in the division. 17/18 where his future was up in the air and his form suffered at Southampton. He joined Liverpool in January of 2018 and immediately reasserted himself as the best, and could make a genuine case for having been the best in the league that year.
20/21 was the season where he tore his ACL five games into the season and missed the rest of the campaign. And then 22/23, the first, and thus far only, season with no extenuating circumstances where Van Dijk wasn’t the league’s best defender.
His form that season is overblown though. Van Dijk was poor by his own standards, but compared to the rest of the defenders in the Premier League he was still well above average.
The issue for truly great players, like Van Dijk, is that they can only ever be compared to their own previous form. While the greatest compliment someone like William Saliba can be paid is a comparison to Van Dijk, there’s simply nobody to compare Van Dijk to outside of his previous self.
Last season he was once again the best defender in the league, comfortably, and kept Liverpool in a title race until late into the season despite historic injury problems within their squad.
In defense, Alisson Becker missed 10 games, Trent Alexander-Arnold started only 25 games, Ibrahima Konate made only 17 starts while Andrew Robertson missed 18.
That’s 64 missed starts among Liverpool’s first choice defense outside of Van Dijk. The replacements including the inexperienced Caoimhin Kelleher and two academy graduates in Conor Bradley and Jarell Quansah who had been playing in League 1 the previous season.
That’s not to mention the constant injury enforced chopping and changing in midfield.
But Van Dijk’s outstanding form held that team together, and kept them in the hunt for the title until their April collapse. Even then, his form remained outstanding.
Virgil Van Dijk: More Than a Defender
Van Dijk has proven time and again that he has no peers as a defender, and if all players were judged equally he would be seen as the best player in the League. For many years the discourse was Salah or DeBruyne, while the correct answer was Van Dijk.
It’s still Van Dijk. He’s performing at a historically good level, turning in flawless performance after flawless performance. Once again a victim of his own greatness, these performances are taken for granted. An effortless game for Van Dijk is equal to the best possible performance of the vast majority of other defenders in the division, so he doesn’t get a fraction of the praise that others do.
Virgil Van Dijk is the best defender in Premier League history, nobody has reached the level he displayed in 2018/19, 2019/20 or 2023/24 and nobody can match his six seasons as the league’s best.
Children and bitter rivals will try to diminish him, making silly claims about longevity despite his sustained greatness dating back to the 2015/16 season. They will attempt to claim he “only had two good seasons” which is downplaying the true greatness of those seasons, and ignoring the 15/16 and 16/17 seasons at Southampton, and the 21/22 and 23/24 seasons.
But Van Dijk has risen above the nonsense. He’s not just the best defender in the league, he’s the best player in the league.
