Sepp van den Berg has golden chance to impress Liverpool boss Arne Slot after transfer update
Sepp van den Berg has a great opportunity to impress Liverpool boss Arne Slot in pre-season.
The Reds have rejected bids for the returning defender, according to The Athletic (8 July), with Wolfsburg and Mainz said to made offers.
Liverpool value Van den Berg at £20million and he has also generated interest from PSV Eindhoven.
But he now also has a great opportunity to show new boss Arne Slot after the Liverpool Echo shared that as many as nine first-team players will be without nine players for their pre-season tour of the United States due to Euro 2024 and Copa America.
Van den Berg is at the AXA Training Centre for prepare for the new campaign and fate might have provided him with an opportunity.
Slot set to give van den Berg Liverpool chance
The 22-year-old will get his chance to impress Slot for pre-season with three of their senior centre-backs on international duty.
Ibrahima Konate, Virgil Van Dijk and Joe Gomez are representing their countries at Euro 2024 with one of the latter sure to be in the final as Netherlands face England in the semi-finals.
Ryan Gravenberch and Trent Alexander-Arnold are also at the competition while Darwin Nunez, Alexis Mac Allister and Luis Diaz are in the semi-finals of the Copa America.
Before the work can begin on determining whether van den Berg is ready to challenge for a spot in the first-team, the defender has to smooth things over with the club.
He launched a stark attack on the club who he believes didn’t look after him.
“I had a good conversation with the management (in 2021). He said he had received good reports. I understood that I wasn’t going to play Van Dijk, Matip or Konate out (the team),” he said to De Telegraaf (1 June). “But I thought I could be right behind it. When I didn’t get a chance again, I said: ‘Figure it out, I want to leave.’
“You (Liverpool) didn’t exude confidence in me all this time, but you do want to hinder my future. I want to keep playing every week and develop myself further. In Germany, I enjoy Dortmund away with 70,000 people, Bayern Munich away against Harry Kane, Stuttgart, Leipzig, Leverkusen, against clubs like that I am challenged every week.”
He has had three loan spells to Preston, Schalke and Mainz but his spell in Germany last season was his most impressive to date.
Comparisonator ranked him as one of the top five defenders in Europe using their AI index with club captain Van Dijk holding the top spot.
Accumulating an average of 562 for a side that avoided a relegation play-off spot by two points is impressive.
Mainz manager Bo Henriksen heaped praise on the defender’s development during his time with the club.
He said: ““He is a leader and the boss in the middle. He’s getting better and better.” via (Liverpool ECHO, 19 March)
Van den Berg made 31 starts for Mainz and scored three goals.
The Liverpool coaching staff believe that his technical ability improved during his loan and he recorded the highest average speed during running tests conducted over the weekend.
Last season he recorded a top speed of 34.78kmh, faster than any other Liverpool centre-back (Daily Mail, 5 May).
His speed and physicality are perfectly suited for the high-line of Liverpool and the physical nature of the Premier League.
As per FBref, he was in the top 99 percentile for aeriel duels, 98 percentile for blocks, 87 percentile for clearances and 75 percentile for interceptions.
Those numbers are not just in comparison with defenders in the Bundesliga, but with defenders across the top-five leagues as well as the Champions League and Europa League.
Evidence of Van den Berg’s quality stretches back as far as his loan with Preston in the Championship during the 2021/22 season.
In stats provided by Squawka, he is one of the most played Premier League loanee in the Championship during his spell.
Among the likes of Arsenal defender Ben White, Crystal Palace centre-back Marc Guehi and Fikayo Tomori of AC Milan.
Van den Berg won Preston Fans’ Young Player of the Year award for his performances. He featured 45 times throughout the campaign and was defensively solid keeping 13 clean sheets.
The Dutch centre-back made 1.9 tackles and 1.7 interceptions per 90 and completed 76 percent of his passes (Sofascore).
In light of the numbers, £20m seems cheap for a player of his quality, or better yet avoid a sale all together.
His comments to the press show that he holds high hopes for himself and his future and the underlying numbers show that his future should be at Liverpool.
In other Liverpool news, Liverpool to sign teenage gem Rio Ngumoha from ‘furious’ Chelsea.
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