There are some footballers who look like Liverpool players long before they ever get the chance to pull on the famous red shirt.
There will be elements of their skillset or personality (or both) which look made to measure for the Reds and can lead transfer-hungry fans to scour transfer gossip columns and the like for any clue they might find that could suggest the object of their adoration might one day be bound for Anfield.
Sometimes it just never comes to pass - and this correspondent is among those who still lament Liverpool’s failure to sign Teddy Sheringham from Tottenham in the late 1990s (particularly after where he went instead and what followed) - but sometimes it does and goes even better than everyone hoped, Virgil Van Dijk being a prime example.
