Wayne Rooney has accepted that his public criticism of Virgil van Dijk was “unfair” after an uncomfortable meeting between the pair following Liverpool\u2019s 1\u20130 win over Real Madrid in the Champions League. The result represented a much improved display from Liverpool after a run that included losing six games from seven across all competitions.<\/p>\n
Rooney had earlier suggested that Van Dijk and Mohamed Salah had not “really led the team” and that their “body language is not right”, comments that drew a sharp response from Van Dijk, who labelled Rooney\u2019s analysis “lazy criticism”. The two were then brought together on camera when Van Dijk came out to fulfil media duties instead of the anticipated Dominik Szoboszlai and the exchange was captured by Amazon Prime TV.<\/p>\n
On the latest episode of his self-titled BBC Sport podcast Rooney reflected on the encounter and broadened his comments on scrutiny faced by the champions. “It was meant to be Szoboszlai, I think, to come to the table,” Rooney said. “But I think fair play to him, he came out and he put his point across. Listen, Virgil van Dijk over the last five, four years has been one of, if not, the best centre backs in the world , and his performances have dipped over the last few weeks.<\/p>\n
“I\u2019ve had my opinion on that; he has his own, which you have to respect. But when you\u2019re the Premier League champions, teams are coming for you, and when you don\u2019t win one game, people ask questions. I think the issue is, when you don\u2019t play well and you\u2019re not winning games, as Premier League champions, everyone\u2019s going to have an opinion.<\/p>\n
“And, of course, when you\u2019re not playing well or you\u2019re not winning games that opinion… they\u2019re going to look at why and give their thoughts why. Liverpool can use this in two different ways: they can let it affect them, or they can use it to spur them on.<\/p>\n
“You look at Man Utd over the last few years, the criticism that they\u2019ve had. I played the game, I was captain of England , captain of Man Utd . I got criticised for all kinds. That’s part of being a top player. You have to deal with that. You have to accept it at times. Listen, I was unfair with my comments, I\u2019d be the first to hold my hands up. Same way I did with Man Utd when I had a rant about them and then they won games, and I come back on that. If I was unfair, I\u2019d be fair to hold my hands up.”<\/p>\n
Rooney also said he “doesn\u2019t know” Van Dijk personally, and that suggestions the 34-year-old had eased off after signing his new contract were misplaced. He added that “the best players, top players, which Van Dijk is, use that to spur them on,” a reaction Liverpool will hope to see as they seek to close the gap to early Premier League pacesetters Arsenal before the end of the calendar year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rooney admits his criticism of Van Dijk was ‘unfair’ after an awkward post-match exchange. for fans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4315,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,172],"tags":[1047,1077,1215],"class_list":["post-4316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-epl","tag-champions-league","tag-contract-renewal","tag-controversy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}