{"id":510890,"date":"2026-06-21T09:44:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T09:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/510890\/"},"modified":"2026-06-21T09:44:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-21T09:44:08","slug":"klopp-savages-van-der-vaart-over-boeing-747-criticism-of-van-dijk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/510890\/","title":{"rendered":"Klopp savages Van der Vaart over ‘Boeing 747’ criticism of Van Dijk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jurgen Klopp launched a scathing broadside at pundit and ex-Netherlands international Rafael van der Vaart after the latter\u2019s damning criticism of Virgil van Dijk in recent days.<\/p>\n

The former Tottenham Hotspur playmaker was unimpressed with the Liverpool captain in the Oranje\u2019s 2-2 draw against Japan last weekend, saying on NOS (via GOAL<\/a>) that the 34-year-old turns \u2018like a Boeing 747\u2019 in a withering assessment of his pace.<\/p>\n

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The Reds centre-back started once more on Saturday as Ronald Koeman\u2019s side made light work of Sweden in a 5-1 thrashing, albeit one which featured a slight injury scare<\/a> for our inspirational number 4.<\/p>\n

Klopp hits back at Van der Vaart over Van Dijk criticism<\/p>\n

Speaking as a pundit for German TV on that game, Klopp fired back at Van der Vaart over his comments about Van Dijk a few days ago.<\/p>\n

The former Liverpool manager said (via\u00a0Daily Mail<\/a>):\u00a0\u201cI don\u2019t know if it\u2019s worth naming Rafael van der Vaart at all, but if he ever says something positive about a player, I\u2019m willing to take him seriously again.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have the feeling that he sees something, which then has to be expressed in a flowery way and then he goes against it, but it\u2019s not that important.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Van der Vaart has been quite outspoken in his punditry<\/p>\n

Van der Vaart has been rather outspoken during this World Cup, finding himself at the centre of racism allegations after saying that the Japan players \u2018all look alike<\/a>\u2018 (a remark for which he subsequently apologised) and accusing Klopp of \u2018suffocating\u2019 Cody Gakpo\u2019s talent at Liverpool and \u2018treating him like a utility knife instead of the scalpel he is\u2019 (via @Vfynn_<\/a>\u00a0on X).<\/p>\n

Van Dijk wasn\u2019t perfect against Sweden on Saturday \u2013 his positioning was questionable on a couple of occasions and he was nutmegged by Alexander Isak at one point \u2013 but there were plenty of positives to his performance too, as evidenced by figures from Sofascore<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Passes completed
\n75\/79 (91%)<\/p>\n

Clearances
\n8<\/p>\n

Accurate long balls
\n2\/2<\/p>\n

Possession lost
\n4 (from 91 touches)<\/p>\n

Klopp was clearly incensed by the Dutch pundit\u2019s criticism of the Reds captain, who he managed at Anfield for six-and-a-half years, and felt compelled to hit back at the 43-year-old in public, and we suspect the tit-for-tat mightn\u2019t finish there.<\/p>\n

Not that the Netherlands skipper will be paying much attention as he and his teammates focus on the task of finishing Group F with a win over already eliminated Tunisia and maintaining momentum into the knockout rounds of the World Cup.<\/p>\n

Van Dijk can\u2019t control what the likes of Van der Vaart say about him, but he can influence proccedings on the pitch, and a player of his experience and temperament will gently allow the storm to rage on thousands of miles away from the Oranje\u2019s base camp in North America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jurgen Klopp launched a scathing broadside at pundit and ex-Netherlands international Rafael van der Vaart after the latter\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":510891,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-510890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510890","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=510890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/510891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}