{"id":137143,"date":"2019-07-21T12:11:46","date_gmt":"2019-07-21T11:11:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=137143"},"modified":"2019-07-21T12:12:10","modified_gmt":"2019-07-21T11:12:10","slug":"van-dijk-claims-time-is-right-for-defender-to-win-ballon-dor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=137143","title":{"rendered":"Van Dijk claims time is right for defender to win Ballon D’Or"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Liverpool\u2019s Virgil van Dijk has said \u201cthe time has come\u201d, for a defender to get the Ballon d\u2019Or.<\/p>\n

This comes amid speculation that he is in the frame to scoop football\u2019s top individual award.<\/p>\n

Van Dijk has already collected the PFA\u2019s Player of the Year award, as the Reds claimed the Champions League title and a second-place finish in the Premier League.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo get the PFA Player of the Year is a fantastic honour.<\/p>\n

\u201cit\u2019s the highest honour you can get because it\u2019s voted by your fellow peers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said it back then as well, I would trade it for the Champions League. Luckily, I didn\u2019t have to.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an honour if people are talking about [the Ballon d\u2019Or], but what can I do? I have no influence on anything.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t deny I had a pretty good season last year, so the only thing I can do now is just focus on the new season, getting fit, stay fit and hopefully get an even better season than I had last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can understand the fact that normally strikers or No. 10\u2019s win these awards because it\u2019s more attractive to see. But maybe the time has come to change it,\u201d Van Dijk told Liverpool\u2019s official website,<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Liverpool\u2019s Virgil van Dijk has said \u201cthe time has come\u201d, for a defender to get the Ballon d\u2019Or. This comes amid speculation that he is in the frame to scoop football\u2019s top individual award. Van Dijk has already collected the PFA\u2019s Player of the Year award, as the Reds claimed the Champions League title and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":135007,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[8042,12804,12301],"class_list":["post-137143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-ballon-dor","tag-liver-pool","tag-vandijk"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=137143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/135007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=137143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=137143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=137143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}