![](\"http:\/\/arewa.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Ballon-dOr-2019-Ex-Chelsea-defender-names-player-to-win-award.jpg\")
<\/p>\nFormer Chelsea defender, Mario Melchiot, has backed Liverpool\u2019s Virgil van Dijk to win this year\u2019s Ballon d\u2019 Or ahead of Barcelona captain, Lionel Messi and Juventus superstar, Cristiano Ronaldo.<\/p>\n
Melchiot believes his fellow countryman deserves to win the world individual top-prize award ahead of Messi and Ronaldo after he recently won this year\u2019s UEFA Men Player of the Year award.<\/p>\n
According to him, this year could be Van Dijk\u2019s moment to win the Ballon d\u2019 Or, adding that the centre-back has proven himself as one of the best players in the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe great thing about Van Dijk is that he has a cool head in all situations,\u201d Melchiot told Goal. \u201cI hope he keeps it because it makes him different. It brings ease to his team-mates; it makes him look like he is in control and feel like he is in control.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I was watching him in Holland at Groningen, I saw that he was relaxed. He was peaceful and not flash. His city is like that. Then he chose a great journey \u2013 he went to Scotland and showed he can handle it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen, in the Premier League, he showed he could handle it with Southampton. [Then] Liverpool came in with big money. Immediately he brought the calmness [that they didn\u2019t have before]. He has speed, strength, technique and he understands the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe can take a striker out of the game and he has a coach that anyone would want to play for. The only thing is, people now see him as a special player. A small mistake will seem like a big mistake, but I don\u2019t think he will struggle with that.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is also Holland\u2019s captain. He\u2019s a great player, he brought calmness to Liverpool even in the Champions League final. He has proven himself as one of the best, he should definitely be amongst the top picks for the Ballon d\u2019Or. This could be his moment.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former Chelsea defender, Mario Melchiot, has backed Liverpool\u2019s Virgil van Dijk to win this year\u2019s Ballon d\u2019 Or ahead of Barcelona captain, Lionel Messi and Juventus superstar, Cristiano Ronaldo. Melchiot believes his fellow countryman deserves to win the world individual top-prize award ahead of Messi and Ronaldo after he recently won this year\u2019s UEFA Men […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":149686,"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":[8042,13161,2398,13160],"class_list":["post-149685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-ballon-dor","tag-cr7","tag-messi","tag-virgil"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149685","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=149685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/149686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=149685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=149685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=149685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}