Jaap Stam makes Virgil van Dijk admission and addresses critics of Liverpool captain
If given the choice to play alongside "one of the Premier League greats" in defence, former Manchester United centre-back Jaap Stam would pick Liverpool's Virgil van Dijk.
During a 15-year career, Stam was highly successful across Europe. Three of those were spent in England with Liverpool's bitter rivals, where he won three Premier League titles and the Champions League once.
Now his latest move was to appear on The Overlap's Stick to Football podcast, and host Gary Neville presented an interesting challenge to his former-United team-mate. Stam was tasked with picking a defensive partner from the Premier League era.
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Unable to think he asked for help from the regular panellists. Ian Wright and Roy Keane debated both Tony Adams and Sol Campbell, while Neville went with Chelsea's John Terry.
Liverpool great Jamie Carragher finally opted for 2020 Reds title-winner van Dijk - and Stam could only agree.
"I’d keep it Dutch, I’d play alongside Virgil van Dijk," he explained. "It would be a good partnership. I like the others [Tony Adams, Sol Campbell and John Terry], but Virgil is a very good player."
Carragher then came back to Stam hoping for his insights on the Liverpool captain, following up with the question about the criticism he seemingly gets from pundits looking at the Dutch national team.
Stam replied: "The thinking is the communication, his coaching, his leadership, is not doing enough on the pitch. They think he needs to do more, especially when the team is not playing well, that he needs to be the player to tell them what to do and put them
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