Ballon d'Or Power Ranking: November 2019

Modified Nov 05, 2019 13:06 GMT

#3 Virgil van Dijk

It would be safe to say that Virgil van Dijk would have been hoping for a better month with respect to his Ballon d'Or hopes. This human roadblock of a defender was not at his very best in the past month.

Van Dijk featured 5 times for Liverpool and twice for the Netherlands international team in October but did not keep even one clean sheet. To his merit, he hasn't lost one either but when the stakes are as high as they are when it comes to the Ballon d'Or, these finer numbers end up mattering a lot.

Van Dijk continues to be the best centre-back in the world right now but this might not be the year when he walks away with the most coveted individual prize in football. However, we are not going to shut ourselves down to the idea and wouldn't be too surprised if the Dutchman breaks the trend and wins the Ballon d'Or over the rest of the competition.

After all, he won the UEFA Champions League and was the runners-up in the UEFA Nations League.

About the author

Shambhu is a European and international football journalist at Sportskeeda who focuses on previews, listicles and news articles. An ardent Manchester United supporter since before his teenage years, he started following the Red Devils by age 10 watching MUTV on television. Shambhu is also a highly-revered rapper and a playback singer on Spotify, having a whopping 1 million monthly listeners.

For his articles, Shambhu believes in triple-checking every piece of information, relying on trusted websites like Transfermarkt and Opta, and staying away from speculative publications. He believes that his law degree helped him to be more articulate and meticulous with his content and one of his core strengths is seamlessly involving emotion in his write-ups owing to the love for the sport. For Sportskeeda, has done exclusive interviews with Spanish legends Gaizka Mendieta and Fernando Morientes so far, and his articles boast of a huge readership of close to 50 million.

Shambhu's favorite footballer is Lionel Messi, and the Argentine attaining glory in 2022 is his favorite FIFA World Cup moment. He believes only Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland could replicate Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo's rivalry in the years to come. His favorite manager is Sir Alex Ferguson due to the Scot's unmatched longevity at the top.

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Edited by Zaid Khan