Sports
Dissecting Haaland vs Van Dijk: When the league's best striker took on its best defender
The best striker in the Premier League versus the best defender in the Premier League in a one-on-one showdown with millions of people watching across the world?
Liverpool vs Manchester City had far bigger things at stake on Sunday (it finished 1-1 for those of you who live on Mars) but those few seconds when Erling Haaland took on Virgil van Dijk were explosive and exciting.
Two masters of their art had almost 3,500 square metres of hallowed Anfield turf to themselves.
Haaland thundered towards goal, dancing around the ball with protracted step-overs and feints, desperate to tempt a challenge from the game’s most unflappable centre-half. But the Dutchman resisted, back-tracking towards his own goal, and though he ultimately could not stop Haaland from slipping away and taking on the shot, it was an effort comfortably collected by his goalkeeper.
Fantastic defending, or a slice of luck? The Athletic breaks it down, with the help of former Premier League strikers and centre-backs.
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So, the ball breaks, and you’re staring down a single defender, with the freedom of the pitch to work with. What is going through your head?
“Well, you’re weighing up who you’re up against”, the Premier League’s all-time top goalscorer Alan Shearer tells The Athletic. “If, for argument’s sake, you’re up against a guy who you know is not as quick, then the obvious thing you’re going to do is knock it and run it.”
“But he knows he isn’t going to do that to Virgil, because the Liverpool defender is one of the few people who can keep up with Haaland — even running backwards.”
The solution is to unsettle Van Dijk, to throw him off balance with a series of twisting dummies and drives. During a five-second stampede, the Norwegian throws in three body feints, two changes of direction and one devastating burst of pace to finally break away from his defender’s grasp.
Haaland’s first move is to dart onto his right foot; this is across the defender’s body and away from where Van Dijk is trying to show him, but onto his weaker foot.
Note Van Dijk’s body shape — side-on and crouched low, able to shift his body weight if required. That stance, according to former Ivory Coast centre-back Sol Bamba, is crucial to the battle.
“Usually, if I was coaching a young defender, I would not tell them to turn their back to the ball so much. But Van Dijk never loses sight of where Haaland is — he is low on his knees and side-on, which means he is prepared to spring in any direction to follow his run.”
Seconds later, and Haaland has changed tack once again.
“What he’s trying to do is go left, go right, go left, go right, and then try to get Virgil off balance to gain control of the duel. But the defender doesn’t dive in, he stands up the whole way,” says Shearer.
It is a move for which Van Dijk has become renowned during his imperious spell at the heart of Liverpool’s defence, famously warding Tottenham’s Moussa Sissoko onto his left foot during a similar break back in 2019.
Statistically, that shows through with the ‘true’ tackles metric, which combines tackles won and lost, as well as fouls committed while attempting a tackle, to measure how often a player looks to “stick a foot in”. Over the last five seasons, Van Dijk averages just 2.2 tackle attempts per game, but crucially, his success rate is up at a very high 61 per cent.
“He never dives in and that’s an art”, says Bamba. “It is so easy to be tempted to go in for the tackle, but if you dive in, someone like Haaland is just going to push the ball past you and beat you.”
“If it was me, I probably would have committed,” Bamba continues, “Neil Warnock used to say to us, ‘If the ball passes, the striker doesn’t!’.”
“But it takes real discipline to back off like that. Van Dijk is clever, plays with his head and reads the game really well.”
The relentless Haaland continues to twist and turn even as the spaces continue to be shut down.
Having already turned Van Dijk around twice, the striker plants his right foot as if he is about to drag the ball over with his left, but instead ducks to the opposite side and continues onto his stronger foot.
Here we can see the subtle move in three frames, as Haaland nudges the ball underneath Van Dijk’s trailing boot and powers towards the penalty area.
The resulting shot, however, is weak, and Shearer puts that down to the defensive pressure.
“Because he hadn’t had much joy in going left and right, Haaland is thinking, ‘Right, I’m going to run out of time in a minute, so I have to get my shot away pretty quickly’.”
“In reality, he would have preferred to be another three or four yards closer, so that’s part of Van Dijk doing his job and making the forward’s mind up to take the shot where he has done”
Having kept close to Haaland all the way through, the defender even manages to lean into the striker just as he is lining up his shot.
Off balance, forced wide, and with his angles narrowed down, patient defensive play and constant attention to the ball have minimised the probability of the world’s most lethal striker getting a clean shot away, an effort valued at 0.10 expected goals by Opta, essentially suggesting an average player would have a 10 per cent chance of scoring. Not a bad result from an intimidating one-v-one.
“He makes it so uncomfortable for him,” says Bamba, “He is so close to him for 40 metres, and forces him into a difficult shot.”
“I would’ve fancied it in my heyday, yeah!” chuckled Shearer, asked if he would have enjoyed such a showdown in a massive game such as this. You can’t begrudge the confidence from a man with 260 Premier League goals.
But there aren’t many players in world football who can reliably beat Van Dijk in a one-v-one, as his latest titanic tussle showed.
“He would have believed in himself in that situation, Haaland, but it just didn’t happen”, said Shearer, “and that was more through really, really good defending than it was poor attacking play.”
Let’s hope we get a re-run again soon.
(Top photo: Premier League)
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The PGA Tour has announced that it will not be hosting an event in Hawaii during the 2027 season, ending a 56-year run of holding a tournament in The Aloha State. The change comes as the Tour and CEO Brian Rolapp have consistently teased a revamped schedule beginning next year.
The Tour was forced to cancel The Sentry at the start of the 2026 campaign due to the dying grass on the Plantation Course at Kapalua amid a local dispute with the company responsible for delivering water to the area.
An aerial view of the golf course from over the ocean prior to The Sentry at The Plantation Course at Kapalua on December 31, 2023 in Kapalua, Maui, Hawaii. (Photo by Ben Jared/PGA TOUR) (Ben Jared/PGA TOUR)
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With The Sentry being canceled, the Sony Open at Waialae Country on Oahu served as the Tour’s season opener in ‘26, which was won by Chris Gotterup. The event was in the final year of its sponsorship, although the Tour has shared that it is working toward making the event the opening event on the PGA Tour Champions circuit.
Chris Gotterup of the United States celebrates with the trophy on the 18th green after his winning round of the Sony Open in Hawaii 2026 at Waialae Country Club on January 18, 2026 in Honolulu, Hawaii. (Photo by Cliff Hawkins/Getty Images) (Cliff Hawkins/Getty Images)
The Tour’s removal of The Sentry and the Sony Open wipes out what has now turned into a traditional two-week stretch on the island to begin a new season.
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The PGA Tour did not share further details about the 2027 schedule upon its announcement about leaving Hawaii, but with Sentry reportedly being an event title-sponsor through 2035, it will need to find a new landing spot on the calendar. The logical stop would be Torrey Pines in San Diego, which checks the West Coast and great weather boxes, but the venue is also looking for a new sponsor, as its deal with Farmers Insurance ended in 2026.
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View of the 18th hole is seen during the final round of The Sentry at The Plantation Course at Kapalua on January 5, 2025 in Kapalua, Maui, Hawaii. (Photo by Ben Jared/PGA TOUR via Getty Images) (Ben Jared/PGA TOUR via Getty Images)
The Tour’s decision not to begin next season in Hawaii makes sense, as there are plenty of venues in the lower 48 states that are much easier to operate from, but the departure will have a tremendous financial impact on the state.
The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reports that The Sentry is estimated to have a $50 million annual impact on the community, while the Sony Open directly generates an estimated $100 million in revenue per year, plus another $1 million per year to Friends of Hawaii charities.
Martin Dugard is a prolific author and writer. He’s also an assistant cross-country coach at Santa Margarita after being head coach at JSerra for 15 years.
His newest book is “The Long Run,” which discusses the 1970s running boom and is a narrative history of four who sparked the marathon boom: Steve Prefontaine, Frank Shorter, Joan Benoit Samuelson and Grete Waitz.
He’s going to have a book signing on Saturday at 1 p.m. at Barnes & Noble, 26751 Aliso Creek Rd., Aliso Viejo.
Don’t be surprised if he tries to run from Rancho Santa Margarita to his book signing.
This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.
For years, Stephen A. Smith’s many football blunders have been easy enough to explain away.
He’s not an NFL guy (remember when he said the three key players for a game were three guys who weren’t playing in the game?)
Stephen A. Smith falsely claimed the Warriors haven’t made the playoffs since 2022, but Golden State reached the second round in both 2023 and 2025. (Jerome Miron/Imagn Images)
He’s definitely not a college football guy (remember when he called Jalen Milroe Jalen “Milroy” multiple times and then read the wrong stat line after a College Football Playoff game?).
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ESPN forces him into those conversations because First Take has to talk football, and Smith knows that football is the most popular sport in the country and he needs to be seen as an authority (even though he isn’t).
But Monday’s latest mistake is a lot tougher to excuse, because this time Smith wasn’t talking about the NFL or college football. He was talking about the Golden State Warriors, one of the defining NBA dynasties of the last decade.
In other words, he was talking about the sport and the league that’s supposed to be his bread and butter.
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While discussing whether Steve Kerr has coached his last game with Golden State, Smith confidently stated the Warriors “haven’t been back to the playoffs since that championship in 2022.”
Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr looks on during a game against the Sacramento Kings. (Robert Edwards/Imagn Images)
That’s not even close to true. Not only did Golden State make the playoffs last season, but they also reached the postseason in 2023. Last year, the Warriors made the playoffs, beat the Rockets in seven games and advanced to the second round before losing to the Timberwolves. In 2023, they beat the Sacramento Kings in the first round and before losing to the Lakers in the Western Conference semifinals.
So, Smith wouldn’t even have been right if he said they haven’t won a playoff series since 2022. But he didn’t say that. He said they didn’t make the playoffs in any of the past four years, except they did it twice.
Yikes.
This is not an obscure piece of NBA trivia that Smith could be easily forgiven for not knowing. Perhaps he was too busy playing solitaire on his phone and just missed two of the past three NBA postseasons. That’s a tough look for the guy who fancies himself as the No. 1 NBA analyst in the country.
And it’s a terrible look for ESPN, as they keep selling Smith as one of the faces of their NBA coverage.
Stephen A. Smith made a brutal gaffe while talking Warriors playoff history
If Smith made this kind of mistake while talking about the NFL, nobody would be shocked. At this point, sports fans practically expect him to butcher football analysis. It’s almost endearing that a guy with the ego of Smith can be so consistently wrong while also delivering every “fact” with the utmost confidence. It’s part of the Stephen A. experience.
But this one hits differently because the NBA is where he’s supposed to at least know the basics. This is where Smith prides himself as being an authority figure.
Stephen A. Smith incorrectly stated the Golden State Warriors haven’t made the playoffs since their 2022 championship, despite the team reaching the postseason twice since then. (Candice Ward/Imagn Images)
And yet he couldn’t keep the recent playoff history of the Warriors straight. The team whose head coach is in the news every other week. The team that has won four championships since 2014. Arguably one of the most important franchises in the NBA over the past 15 years.
Yes, Golden State missed the playoffs in 2024 after getting bounced in the Play-In Tournament (although they won 46 games that season). And yes, it fell short again this season. But that’s a lot different from acting like Steve Kerr has spent four years wandering the basketball wilderness since winning that 2022 title.
He hasn’t. In fact, the team is 175-153 in the past four regular seasons.
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The Warriors made the second round in 2023. They made the second round again in 2025.
Before burying Steve Kerr on national television, maybe Stephen A. Smith could take 10 seconds to confirm whether the Warriors were actually, you know, in the playoffs.
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