Liverpool's Virgil van Dijk is the best defender in the world.
Having narrowly missed out on the Ballon d'Or to Lionel Messi last year, the defensive juggernaut has now added the Premier League, UEFA Super Cup and FIFA Club Cup to his burgeoning trophy cabinet this season.
Chuck in a Champions League winners' medal from 2018/19 for good measure and you have yourself a defender who, in our opinion at least, has now usurped the likes of Sergio Ramos and Gerard Pique.
Van Dijk's rise to greatness
It's no coincidence that Van Dijk is now being considered alongside John Terry, Nemanja Vidic, Vincent Kompany and Rio Ferdinand as one of the Premier League's greatest ever defenders.
And one of the biggest reasons behind the swelling support for Van Dijk is the fact he seems to do just about everything perfectly from the physical side of his game to his footballing brain.
In other words, he might be the most well-rounded defender we've seen on English shores and that's something that isn't lost on one of the Premier League's other legendary centre-backs.
Kolo Toure on Van Dijk
That's because Arsenal 'Invincible' and former Liverpool player Kolo Toure has expressed his admiration for Van Dijk this week, while also pointing out the Dutchman's potential weakness.
Now a coach at Leicester City, the much loved Ivorian told Stats Perform News that running one-on-one at speed against Van Dijk could be the secret behind exposing the Liverpool giant.
"He's an unbelievable player," Toure said, per AS. "He's a top player. He's got speed, height - he can jump. He's got technique. He can switch the game with his long passes. He has got everything.
Van Dijk's weakness???
"I haven't seen many players challenge him one on one. In my opinion, that's his weakness! He's really tall and if you really attack him with the ball, he can struggle, but he's so clever.
"He's so clever because he drops well. But if you are really aggressive in attack in a one-on-one, I think you can get something from him.
"He's a really clever player. He's got [Joe] Gomez on his side, good players on his side to help him as well. There are good players around him and I think that makes his game easy. But I think he's got so many qualities."
Video of Van Dijk's one-on-one prowess
But is that truly the case, Kolo? Well, we're inclined to disagree and Toure's quotes instantly got us thinking about plenty of times Van Dijk has shown his quality against top players one-on-one.
In fact, there's a viral video from YouTuber J9 Comps that perfectly illustrates Van Dijk's qualities in his potential area of weakness and it's called: "3 Minutes of Virgil Van Dijk Bullying Great Players."
It does, as you can imagine, what it says on the tin and you can check it out down below:
GIVEMESPORT's Kobe Tong says
I think Toure undermined his own point better than I could by saying: 'but he's so clever'.
You're damn right, Kolo, which is exactly why I disagree that Van Dijk is vulnerable one-on-one because he always shows his footballing acumen when he's on the back foot against a forward.
You can always see that Van Dijk is thinking through every little decision about his positioning and body posture in order to make it as difficult as possible for the striker to get a shot away.
This is perfectly illustrated in the video by the way Van Dijk expertly deals with Heung-min Son and Kylian Mbappe, who gave prime examples of when players 'really attack him with the ball'.
And the result isn't Van Dijk struggling as Toure suggests, it's him working out the correct way to either retrieve the ball, push them out wide or even just buy time for the back four to catch up.
Does this mean that I think Van Dijk has no weaknesses? Terrifyingly, yes, yes it does.
