Paul Scholes has weighed in with his views on who he thinks was a better defender than Liverpool brute Virgil Van Dijk in their respective Premier League primes.
Football always brings up discussions of players past and present, with comparisons often being made as to whether stars from yesteryear could rip up the Premier League in the here and now, as the top-flight terrain is now so vastly different from the magical nostalgia of the 1990’s and before.
Amazingly, Scholes – who is already in the Anfield bad books having gone down as a Manchester United playing legend – reckons he has a former Red Devils great he could name, who could give the valiant Van Dijk a run for his money.
The Man Utd player Scholes names as being better than Van Dijk
Liverpool fans will naturally leap to the defence of their brave Dutchman, with the ever-present captain going on to lift two Premier League titles and one Champions League trophy during his near-decade association with Arne Slot’s men.
Of course, at 34 years of age, he has been under some scrutiny in recent times, but you would be hard-pressed to find any die-hard Anfield supporter who doesn’t view the ex-Southampton centre-back as a modern-day great on Merseyside.
Amazingly, though, despite having such a decorated career at the very top donning Liverpool red, Scholes – when speaking on The Good, The Bad and The Football podcast – has strikingly come out to say Jaap Stam might well have been a better defender than Van Dijk, during his Old Trafford peak.
The ex-United legend clarifies by stating – “I think Jaap was better than Van Dijk. I’m probably a bit biased, but I’ve never seen anything like him one-on-one.
And that freed the rest of the team up, I don’t think people realise. Me, a player in centre midfield, I didn’t want to run back. I didn’t have to.
All our thoughts were ‘scoring goals, score goals’ which is what the manager wanted. It was unbelievable, the boy’s going to challenges, he used to just take the ball off people. And then he’d start attacks himself as well, wouldn’t he? He was a monster.”
Stam would go on to be the heartbeat of United’s famous treble-winning squad during the 1998/99 season, culminating in the Dutch warrior being named UEFA Club’s best defender in both 1999 and 2000.
Still, Liverpool fans would no doubt back their own horse in this argument, with Van Dijk a powerful brute in his own right, having kept a mighty 124 clean sheets to date in the Premier League.
He was also awarded the accolade of UEFA’s Best Men’s Player in 2019, after lifting the Champions League trophy proudly, under Jurgen Klopp.
As he winds down his Reds career, now, it will be intriguing down the line to see if a new crop of defenders in the Premier League are eventually compared to the 88-time Netherlands international, as debates surrounding all our favourite footballers rage on.
