The format was a rapid-fire round with GOAL: no long answers, no politician-speak, just picks. Virgil van Dijk was asked which single attribute he would take from any player in world football, and he answered on the beat. Haaland’s finishing.
That was not a surprising pick. Van Dijk has spent most of a decade of Premier League afternoons trying to prevent it, and the Manchester City striker’s ruthlessness in front of goal is the most obvious individual weapon in the modern game. The name that came next is where the interview turned.
The captain picks the academy graduate
Asked which of his teammates does the most eye-catching, “crazy” things in training, the Liverpool captain did not reach for Mohamed Salah or Florian Wirtz. He named Curtis Jones.
“He’s very technical. Top player,” Van Dijk told GOAL.
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Jones is not the obvious answer. The 25-year-old is a Scouser and a lifelong Liverpool academy product who joined the club at U9 level, and by December 2025 he had passed 200 senior appearances at Anfield. He has never been Liverpool’s cover star and he is not a Ballon d’Or contender.
Ronaldinho, Gravenberch and a sporting director in another life
The Haaland answer sat in the middle of a larger round of quick picks.
Ronaldinho came up twice, first as Van Dijk’s childhood idol and again as the retired player he would most have liked to share a pitch with.
When the interviewer asked who he thought was underrated, the answer was another midfielder rather than a marquee attacker: his own teammate Ryan Gravenberch.
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His proudest moment on a pitch was Liverpool’s 2019 Champions League final against Tottenham. The best match he has played in was the Barcelona comeback at Anfield the month before. If football had not worked out, he said, he would have been a sporting director.
For a captain who has led Liverpool since the summer of 2023 and rarely spends a press round on jokes, it was an unusually candid look at who he is watching when the cameras are pointed at someone else.
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