Speaking on the LadBible YouTube channel, Micah Richards and Jamie Redknapp have been building their Manchester City and Liverpool combined XI.
As you can probably imagine, with Redknapp playing for Liverpool and Richards playing for City, both pundits had their own element of bias going into the exercise.
However, despite Richards’ bias towards Manchester City, he did choose one Liverpool player over a Man City star – Joel Matip.
Indeed, Richards picked Matip at centre-back alongside Virgil van Dijk ahead of Ruben Dias.
What’s been said?
Richards made a case for Matip making it into this hypothetical team.
“I think Matip has been good as well though,” Richards said.
“I think he’s underrated. I think he started ok, had the injuries, but as you watch him. Last season he was arguably better than Van Dijk, in my opinion.”
“Dias has been good but there were a couple of times later in the season where he wasn’t dominant.”
“I think Matip, balance wise, I think Dias has got more, but last season I think Matip was class.”
So underrated
The fact that Richards wanted to put Matip in this team ahead of Dias just goes to show how underrated the Cameroonian is.
The centre-half is genuinely one of the best in the world in his position, but due to the fact he’s next to one of the best centre-backs of all-time in Virgil van Dijk, he’s sometimes overshadowed.
The same happened with Ricardo Carvalho during his time alongside John Terry at Chelsea, and sadly, Matip may never get the credit he deserves as one of the Premier League’s most astute defenders.
Whether or not he’s better than Dias is up for debate, but one thing is for sure, Matip is absolutely fantastic.
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