Ibrahima Konaté and Virgil van Dijk: The Wall
Did Liverpool have the Premier League's best central defensive partnership in 2024/25? William Saliba and Gabriel Magalhães want a word.
Liverpool have fielded a number of absurd partnerships in central defence in their pre-season matches this summer. Ryan Gravenberch, Trey Nyoni, Andy Robertson and Kostas Tsimikas are among the players who have featured at the heart of the backline.
With the Reds only having three senior centre-backs with the new season beginning next week, perhaps Arne Slot is testing out a few emergency options. He will feel confident that his first-choice pairing of Ibrahima Konaté alomgside Virgil van Dijk will remain fit to play the majority of the important games. They featured together in 41 matches last term.
Their impressive record for availability was likely aided by tactical choice. An Opta Analyst article in March noted the Liverpool duo were in the top four outfielders for least distance covered per 90 minutes last season. While Konaté suffered one eight-match absence, his 42 appearances was his most in a club campaign. Van Dijk was available throughout 2024/25.
This meant they had no competition with a decent sample size at Liverpool. The premium pair played 3,278 minutes together, with the second most common duo of Joe Gomez and van Dijk trailing way behind on just 526. The Dutchman had a better record with Konaté anyway, amassing a superior clean sheet percentage in completed games (52 per cent) and non-penalty goals (npg) conceded per 90 minutes (0.82).
Having compiled this data since 2019, it is apparent how stable their partnership was last season. There were only three other instances of a Reds centre-back twosome playing even half as many minutes in any of the preceding five campaigns.
The closest comparable example was Joël Matip with van Dijk in 2021/22, as they worked in tandem for 3,001 minutes. They were also a rarity in the last six years in that they had a better record for conceding non-penalty goals than Ibou and Virgil have had for Slot.
They were better by a sizeable margin too. A team’s defensive record is clearly down to more than the identity of the players in central defence, though.
Konaté and van Dijk could also argue they didn’t need to be at their best all the way to the finish line last season unlike the Liverpool defenders of three years earlier. Most people would say the 2024/25 Premier League title was effectively secured following the 2-0 win at Manchester City; at that point, the Reds’ leading centre-backs were combining to allow 0.72 npg per 90 across the campaign.
Are they best in the business as we head into 2025/26? We can see how the Konaté/van Dijk axis fared against all other duos in the division, with expected goals factored in too.
The following comparison is not perfect. Without full access to Opta’s delicious data, the xG figures which follow apply to matches started by the partnerships in question, not across the exact time that they paired up.
However, 23 of the 26 outfield players who completed every match they started in the 2024/25 Premier League were defenders. Centre-backs rarely tap out early.
I’ve also stuck to back fours to keep things simple. The eight clubs who conceded fewer than 50 goals collectively used a three or five-man backline in only 10 of their 304 games. It is not a common tactic among sides that Liverpool wish to measure themselves against.
Yes, Manchester United, that very much includes you. Ta-ra, Ruben.
William Saliba and Gabriel Magalhães just shaded top spot ahead of the Liverpool pair, albeit at a margin that equates to under one expected goal across 38 games. It’s nothing.
And even if Slot’s football is a touch more cautious than Jürgen Klopp’s, he’s still a country mile away from Mikel Arteta’s sufferball. To (basically) match the Gunners defensively is impressive. Where Arsenal deserve credit is that their level didn’t drop when Jakob Kiwior had to sub-in for their Brazilian centre-half, not that Liverpool were too much worse when Gomez was to van Dijk’s right.
The market for centre-halves looks a bit odd this summer. Dean Huijsen leads the way in transfer fee terms, yet as high as his ceiling looks, he wasn’t half of Bournemouth’s best duo.
The next costliest mover is Jean-Clair Todibo, who is merely making his loan to West Ham a permanent switch, with Liverpool’s sale of Jarell Quansah taking the other spot on the podium. It makes one wonder how much a top, established centre-back would cost in 2025.
There are too many factors in play to know if this level of performance will be sustainable for the Liverpool pair. Van Dijk has another year on the clock while Konaté may be distracted by his contract situation. The encouraging factor is that this duo improved by this measure in 2024/25 whereas the Arsenal partnership got worse. They were 0.38 xG apart the season before last.
In the league alone, Konaté and van Dijk have improved their xG conceded in each of the last two seasons, having maintained a consistent rate across their first two campaigns together. It will be difficult to improve further but it’s not impossible that they might be better than Gabriel and Saliba this season.
Much may depend how well they work with new boys Jeremie Frimpong and Milos Kerkez stationed outside them. In the second friendly with Athletic Club, it was notable that Dominik Szoboszlai urged his countryman forward while dropping back to make an in-possession back three. Could that become a regular feature?
Whatever the answer to that puzzler, Slot won’t be using Gravenberch, Nyoni, Robertson or Tsimikas at centre-back in 2025/26 if he can help it. Gomez might even struggle for a game at this rate.