Who Fills Virgil van Dijk's Shoes at Liverpool?

At Anfield, the question is already being asked in hushed tones: who comes after Virgil van Dijk?

Two names keep surfacing. Jacquet and Leoni. Two centre-backs with promise, potential and, crucially, time on their side.

Former Liverpool defender Stephen Warnock believes they might just be the ones to grow into that enormous void – but he’s in no rush to crown them.

“Possibly,” he told GOAL, when asked if the pair could one day fill Van Dijk’s boots. “I think the hard thing is trying to replace, obviously, a player of Van Dijk's stature.”

That’s the crux of it. You don’t really replace Van Dijk. You try to build the next version of your defence and hope someone rises to that level.

Leoni has already offered a glimpse. One game in Liverpool colours, a body of work in Serie A, and a reputation forged in Italy that has clearly travelled. The noise around him is positive, the scouting reports glowing. Jacquet, too, sits in that bracket of “one to watch” rather than “finished article”.

The problem? Once you reach that tier of expectation, the pressure never leaves.

“There will be more talk, talking about Van Dijk and can they be the heir to the throne, of taking over Van Dijk?” Warnock said. The comparisons are inevitable. The question is whether they can live with it.

For centre-halves, the real education comes later. Warnock points to those mid-20s years – 26, 27 – when the game slows down in your head, when patterns make sense and your positioning becomes instinct rather than calculation.

“And that's essentially what you have to do when you're a centre-half,” he explained. “You've got to read the game better, you've got to get yourself in better positions, and that's part of the process.”

Right now, Jacquet and Leoni are on the right track. That’s all anyone can honestly say. Trajectory, not destiny.

Because football careers don’t run in straight lines. Injuries intervene. Form dips. The weight of the shirt can suddenly feel heavier than expected. The club’s wider state – confident, chaotic, or somewhere in between – seeps into individual performances.

Warnock knows exactly how context can make or break a defender. He only has to look back at the moment Van Dijk himself walked through the doors at Melwood.

“When you think about when Virgil van Dijk came into the Liverpool team, it was almost him and Alisson that were the final two pieces of the jigsaw,” he said. The system was ready. The team was primed. A structure existed that allowed greatness to flourish, not just promise.

“And it slotted him perfectly into a great system, a great team.”

That luxury doesn’t quite exist now. Liverpool are reshaping, recalibrating, working out what comes after the peak Jürgen Klopp years.

“At the moment, Liverpool are in a transitional phase and that's difficult to play in at times,” Warnock admitted.

So Jacquet and Leoni face a different challenge to Van Dijk’s. They’re not being asked to complete a masterpiece. They’re being asked to help sketch the next one.

Whether either of them ends up as the true heir to Van Dijk’s throne is a question that can’t be answered this season, or even next. But the clock is already ticking towards those defining years in their mid-20s.

By then, Liverpool will know if they’ve unearthed the next defensive leader – or if the search must start all over again.