Rio Ferdinand believes he would have formed a formidable partnership alongside Liverpool defender Virgil van Dijk had the pair played together during his professional career.
The ex-Manchester United centre-back is best-known for the relationship he developed with Nemanja Vidic during his Old Trafford days, which saw Sir Alex Ferguson's side shut out a number of attacking forces.
Determining which defensive pairing can be considered the best to grace the top-flight remains up for debate, though BT Sport attempted to bring an end to any arguments by asking fans to vote for an ultimate starting eleven as the Premier League celebrates its 30th anniversary.
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Ferdinand and Van Dijk prevailed ahead of the likes of John Terry, Sol Campbell and Tony Adams to earn the two starting spots. Providing his reaction to making the cut, which was decided after over 200,000 online votes, Ferdinand told BT Sport: "I feel honoured to be selected in teams like this and one thing every player in that team will have had in common is a work ethic. That is the foundation to be considered for a team like this. I'm proud, definitely.
"That's a big problem for me," he added when discussing Vidic being overlooked for the squad. "He will be phoning me later, don't worry about that. On paper, we [Van Dijk] would have worked well together. There won't have been many players getting in behind us with the pace we would have had, I know that for a fact."
Only adding to the frustration of the ex-United centre-back, Mohamed Salah was also picked by fans ahead of Cristiano Ronaldo. "Ronaldo's not in there? I didn't even look that far up the pitch. Wow, wow," said Ferdinand in response to this omission.
Joe Cole, meanwhile, added: "Yeah, that is astonishing. When you think of the quality players we've seen over the 30 years, and it is still getting stronger and stronger, picking it was really tough."
Ferdinand unsurprisingly opted for Vidic as his centre-back partner in his own starting-eleven, though included Steven Gerrard as part of his midfield three.
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