Featured Image Credit: Sky
Topics: Virgil Van Dijk, Wayne Rooney, Football, Liverpool, Paris Saint-Germain, Champions League
Marcus Chan
Topics: Virgil Van Dijk, Wayne Rooney, Football, Liverpool, Paris Saint-Germain, Champions League
Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk has responded after being labelled as 'lazy' by Manchester United legend Wayne Rooney.
On Tuesday night, Liverpool suffered their second Anfield defeat of the season as they were knocked out of the Champions League by French giants Paris Saint Germain.
Despite returning to Anfield with a 1-0 lead, Liverpool were stunned by Ousmane Dembele's goal in the 12th minute, which ended up taking the tie all the way to penalties.
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Unfortunately for the Reds, Darwin Nunez and Curtis Jones missed their spot kicks as PSG came away 4-1 winners in the shootout.
Speaking on Amazon Prime, former United and England star Rooney branded Van Dijk 'lazy' as he felt the Dutchman could have done more to prevent Dembele's goal.
He said: "They are trying to press the ball and Van Dijk gets lazy. If you keep your eye on Van Dijk, he’s walking and leaves a massive gap to Dembele.
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"All he has to do is come across and cover Dembele because there is no other pass for Paris to get out and he doesn’t. Dembele gets it and he’s got a lot of space, gets the ball out wide and then Konate doesn’t switch on and then he reacts."
In response to Rooney, Van Dijk explained: "Someone told me about this. I think at that particular moment I’m helping [Andrew] Robertson, telling him to clear the outside. I take the inside.
"I’m even explaining now what I thought at that moment, but if he [Rooney] thought it was lazy then he gave his opinion. That’s it."
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He continued: "There were so many challenges years ago for those players and, obviously, it’s a challenge for the players nowadays that you have to deal with opinions here and there and it gets blown up all the time.
"Looking at what I see in the dressing room, the boys are doing well in terms of keeping their heads down and focusing on the task ahead. That’s the most important thing I want to see. No one’s going smooth sailing, especially if you’re in the Premier League. If we get the reward for it at the end of the season then I’m sure Liverpool is going to be bouncing."
Liverpool are set to take on Newcastle United in the Carabao Cup final at Wembley on Sunday afternoon.