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<\/p>\nAccording to Murphy, the Netherland\u2019s centre-back deserves the top prize after leading Liverpool to victory in the UEFA Champions League title last season.<\/p>\n
DAILY POST recalls that Van Dijk is among the 30-man shortlist for this year\u2019s Europe top individual prize alongside Messi and Ronaldo.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, the winner [2019 Ballon D\u2019 Or] is obvious: Virgil van Dijk,\u201d Murphy told talkSPORT.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe that because of the massive impact he\u2019s had on Liverpool Football Club.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are so many facets to him: his leadership qualities have grown, and his influence on others is probably the biggest reason.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis impact on the performances of the players around him, especially the back four, is phenomenal.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you think of the full-backs, they\u2019ve improved tremendously and that\u2019s partly because of the security he gives them to go forward, knowing he\u2019s so capable when other teams counter-attack.\u201d<\/p>\n
Murphy added: \u201cObviously, you\u2019re dealing with the best players in the world and when you look at Lionel Messi\u2019s goalscoring record, if he did win it over Van Dijk, you would have to understand why.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut his form didn\u2019t help Barcelona win the Champions League. Usually [nine out of the last 12 years] the winner of the Ballon d\u2019Or comes from the winner of the Champions League. The criteria is there and I don\u2019t see why that should change.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn terms of a defender winning it, there are some people who would say it\u2019s easier to destroy than create and I understand that philosophy. But when you look at the impact on others and the way he gets others to perform around him, that\u2019s a wonderful quality.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former Liverpool midfielder, Danny Murphy, has tipped defender, Virgil van Dijk to win this year\u2019s Ballon D\u2019 Or ahead of Barcelona captain, Lionel Messi and Juventus superstar, Cristiano Ronaldo. According to Murphy, the Netherland\u2019s centre-back deserves the top prize after leading Liverpool to victory in the UEFA Champions League title last season. DAILY POST recalls […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":167217,"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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[2658,8042,3367],"class_list":["post-167216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-a","tag-ballon-dor","tag-liverpool"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167216","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=167216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/167217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=167216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=167216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=167216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}