This Virgil is the million dollar man.

 

He barely slides...

 

Here is my take…

Not as great as the likes of Beckenbauer, Baresi, Scirea, Moore, Figueroa, Moore, Passarella, Krol…

He doesn’t have the full pure defensive skills of the likes of Nesta, Maldini, Kohler, Thuram, or other low-block style stoppers…


HOWEVER, his style of defending, he is the BEST:

If you need a centreback to play in a very high line, in a high tempo game, to be able to have recovery pace and natural speed to match the quickest of forwards or the trickiest wingers, making expertly timed challenges and accurate interceptions, possessing the power and physicality to compete with traditional tall, strong centreforwards, and possess the agility to combat low centre of gravity, diminutive attackers, while having minimal specialist defensive support (i.e fullbacks who play like wingers, a centreback partner who would split to the other flank), while possessing composure on the ball, superb distribution ability, initiating attacks from deep with accurate long passes, plus a threat at set pieces, a one-on-one match-up master, expert positioning, high IQ reading of the game, leadership and the ability to maximise the quality of surrounding teammates, then VAN DIJK is your man!

 

I haven't watched enough of Van Dijk to provide any meaningful perspective on his game but @footballFOCUS ' description does make him sound like he'd be a serious, serious weapon when used in combination with, say, Baresi in a Draft game. So let me ask fF point blank...would a CB partnership of VVD and Baresi get your full backing?

 

Yes, Baresi commanding that high offside trap alongside Virgil would be scary.

 

Hopefully, VVD doesn't end up ignored in the next Draft like Virgil the "Superstar". 😞

 

@footballFOCUS

pick the better pair:

Beckenabuer - Virgil

or

Beckenabuer - Desailly

 

@footballFOCUS

pick the better pair:

Beckenabuer - Virgil

or

Beckenabuer - Desailly

Both are elite partnerships. Beckenbauer proved he was fine with a stopper-style centreback or a more adventurous partner in a back four (as long as you have a defensive right back like Vogts or Hottges) I.e a Thuram or Bergomi.

I would actually say a Beckenbauer-Virgil centreback partnership with Desailly as the defensive midfielder is most optimal (in terms of pure-tackling/physical midfield enforcers, he’s probably one of the best) who would dovetail nicely with Der Kaiser’s forward runs. Virgil is familiar with being left alone at the back too.

 

overrated
relied total on physical attributes and a short peak of around 3 years.

Lucio > Virgil

why is virgil hyped the way he is?simple

the league and the team he plays for.

 

weren't all the posts about him on xt saying he always backed away from the attacker? funny to see him called stopper if so

 

@Firdaus I haven't really seen him play. Just testing coherence on XT

 

I still can’t put him over the likes of Desailly and Kohler.

Personally, I lost all respect for him

He went from this (pushing a relatively unknown):

To committing treason:

Is he bipolar or something?

Messi just scored against you.
Your NT is losing.
Your coaching staff just got disrespected.
And he chose to become Messi's bodyguard?

Look at DAVIDS you could tell he was about to strike or something.

Virgil is a soft beta!

 

nah that just looks like being the bigger man, in both cases

paredes is a piece of you know what and got what he deserved

messi is a little cry baby lots of times and you can't let this shit talking ruin the whole experience of the team

side thing: check davids out in Juve's last legends gym football match. the guy still has serious chops

 

Start the thread for the All-Time Draft @Dagoods

Let’s invite @joaquimdelblanco1 too.

Time to put our money where our mouth is

 

Start the thread for the All-Time Draft @Dagoods

Let’s invite @joaquimdelblanco1 too.

Time to put our money where our mouth is

🔥 🔥 🔥

 

Wouldn't even say he was better than Jaap Stam tbh.

Overrated.

 

At this point I don't think Pirri ever watched a full 90 mins of football in his life

Proper wiki youtube merchant

 

shove it.

Virgil was a great athlete. He relied on shadowing players. tactically he's average.
look at him now. above average. nothing more.incredible how he was also hardly impressive at southampton. probably because he had more defending to do.

 

He's the best CB in the league this season

 

david luiz wasn;t close to lucio.

lucio could do everything virgil could do but better and also have a gallop forward like few others could. no one made up ground like him.

 

Lucio - Walter Samuel, the beastliest pairing

 

Clearly, VIRGIL is not a stopper. He's a ball-playing CB blessed with superb physical prowess.

QUESTION IS: Is he better than ALESSANDRO "MAGNO" NESTA?

 

This season Virg has interestingly upped his tackling and headering numbers: some fans usually use his seemingly quiet defensive stat sheet against him when comparing him to low-block tough-tacklers who naturally rack up a multitude of blocks, interceptions and clearance headers.

But no, he’s not better than Nesta.

 

@Der Kaiser was talking about Lucio's "brainfades". @Nacka could you shed some light on the Burlucio moniker you came up with?

He was a total beast in 09/10. As Mori mentioned, the pairing with Samuel may not have seemed the most ideal on paper ahead of that season, but that "you shall not pass" synergy the had was really something else. The Mourinho effect probably had something to do with it too, though Samuel doesn't need any motivation.

 

Before Mourinho had been able to put the kibosh on the bad habits Lucio had a tendency to just dribble until he lost the ball. Later on he made better decisions and released the ball after beating the initial press instead of running into traffic and losing it..