{"id":282115,"date":"2026-02-05T12:54:06","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T12:54:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/282115\/"},"modified":"2026-02-05T12:54:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T12:54:06","slug":"why-jeremy-jacquet-may-be-the-heir-to-virgil-van-dijk-for-liverpool-liverpool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/282115\/","title":{"rendered":"Why J\u00e9r\u00e9my Jacquet may be the \u2018heir to Virgil van Dijk\u2019 for Liverpool | Liverpool"},"content":{"rendered":"

When you miss 18 months of football, there is a natural eagerness to make up for lost time. J\u00e9r\u00e9my Jacquet has certainly done that. This time last year Rennes recalled him from a loan spell at Ligue 2 side Clermont Foot and now he has been signed by Liverpool for \u00a360m<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The conditions were always ripe for Jacquet to succeed at Rennes<\/a>, a club known for developing talent. But even by their standards, the 2005 generation is something special. D\u00e9sir\u00e9 Dou\u00e9, Mathys Tel, Jeanu\u00ebl Belocian, Lesley Ugochukwu and, come the summer, Jacquet will have all left Rennes, but not before pushing each other to greater heights during their formative years.<\/p>\n

However, Jacquet\u2019s growth was stunted in his teenage years, albeit not literally. The defender grew by 10cm in a year, which was not without its complication. For 18 months, Jacquet hardly played and required surgery to remove the end of a cartilage. \u201cFor J\u00e9r\u00e9m, it was growth injuries, Osgood-Schlatter, things like that. You know you\u2019re going to lose time,\u201d recalls Laurent Viaud, his manager at under-19s level.<\/p>\n

As it transpires, those injuries gave Jacquet fresh momentum. \u201cWhen he came back, he wanted to eat everything up,\u201d says Viaud. \u201cIt was bordering on us having to slow him down because we had to manage him because otherwise, at some point, he was going to explode. The day young players come back from injury they have a desire to grow because they know what it\u2019s like to be off the pitch, out of training. Suddenly, they forge a mentality that may be better than that of those who were permanently on the pitch.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rennes were also relieved to see Jacquet had not lost any of his technical gifts. \u201cTheir bodies change, they may become less coordinated \u2013 that\u2019s where you have a doubt,\u201d says Viaud. But that was not the case for Jacquet, who was already considered a \u201ccomplete\u201d defender \u2013 bestowed with \u201cspeed, aggression, a strong heading game, and above all, technical quality\u201d. He honed his technique while playing in midfield at a young age. When he first arrived at the club, he was profiled as a defensive midfielder and took inspiration from Paul Pogba. \u201cI always wanted to play like him,\u201d Jacquet told L\u2019\u00c9quipe. The influence is evident in Jacquet\u2019s expansive and ambitious \u2013 sometimes overly ambitious \u2013 passing game.<\/p>\n

Jacquet was initially opposed to playing deeper but he gave in to his coaches. \u201cThey knew football better than me at that point,\u201d admitted Jacquet, who has developed as a defender while maintaining the football IQ of a midfielder. \u201cWhere he has really advanced is in his reading of the situation and reading of the trajectory of the ball,\u201d says Viaud. He has improved with experience, with his loan spell at Clermont Foot \u2013 where Jacquet says his career \u201cstarted\u201d \u2013 crucial.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s off the pitch where we saw the difference,\u201d says Viaud, noting the difference between the Jacquet who left Rennes and the one who returned. \u201cHere in Rennes, our boys are in a cocoon. He saw what Ligue 2 was, what a training centre was in Ligue 2. And yet at Clermont, they don\u2019t have a bad training centre, but he saw the training conditions you can have. In Rennes, we are extraordinarily lucky.\u201d<\/p>\n

His performances in Ligue 2 impressed to the extent that, last February, Rennes paid nearly \u20ac1m to bring back the defender early. The fee made Jacquet the 17th-most expensive departure in Clermont\u2019s history but the club\u2019s manager, Laurent Batlles, was desperate to keep the young defender.<\/p>\n

It was clear that Jacquet would play a role in the second part of the season at Rennes, but what wasn\u2019t foreseeable was how important he would become in Habib Beye\u2019s side. Despite Anthony Rouault and Lilian Brassier both arriving for a combined cost of \u20ac25m that month, Jacquet became indispensable, starting 11 of Rennes\u2019 14 remaining league games and instigating a rise up the table.<\/p>\n

Rennes consider J\u00e9r\u00e9my Jacquet a combination of Marcel Desailly (centre) and Laurent Blanc (right). Photograph: Michel Euler\/AP<\/p>\n

That has continued this season, with Jacquet playing every game but for two he missed due to suspension. Abdelhamid A\u00eft Boudlal, an exciting Moroccan 19-year-old, has joined him in the team at centre-back, giving Jacquet a more senior role. \u201cI have to be more of a presence in the dressing room and on the pitch,\u201d he says. Charged with greater responsibility, his level has remained high, even if there are still weaknesses. While he is impressive on the ball, he admits that he can be \u201cnonchalant\u201d at times. But at his age, it is better to play with confidence than with fear of losing the ball, and his ambition will serve him as he makes the step up to the Premier League next season.<\/p>\n

And he will have leaders around him, not least in the form of Virgil van Dijk, one of the great defenders of the 21st century. Jacquet named the Netherlands international, as well as his centre-back partner Ibrahima Konat\u00e9, as an inspiration, and Viaud sees the Frenchman as the Dutchman\u2019s natural \u201cheir\u201d \u2013 and he has an eye, given he worked as a scout for Liverpool<\/a> during the Rafael Ben\u00edtez era.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the recruiters have seen in J\u00e9r\u00e9m the heir to Van Dijk because in a lot of areas J\u00e9r\u00e9m looks like him,\u201d says Viaud. \u201cI would almost say he is faster than Van Dijk. He has to learn from players like Van Dijk, but there is a lot of similarity between the two.\u201d Viaud adds that any scout who failed to recognise Jacquet\u2019s huge potential would be guilty of \u201cprofessional misconduct\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was from the generation of Marcel Desailly \u2013 I was at school with him. J\u00e9r\u00e9m is Desailly on the defensive side and Laurent Blanc on the attacking side; he\u2019s a mix of the two. When you see the careers the two of them had, honestly, I can\u2019t imagine how far J\u00e9r\u00e9m can go. He can really define his generation of defenders.\u201d They are big shoes to fill, but Jacquet has already grown a lot \u2013 both physically and metaphorically. As Rennes\u2019 record sale \u2013 above Ousmane Demb\u00e9l\u00e9 and Dou\u00e9 \u2013 he looks capable of filling them.<\/p>\n

This is an article by Get French Football News<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When you miss 18 months of football, there is a natural eagerness to make up for lost time.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282116,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-282115","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}