Ronnie O'Sullivan names 3 players who could be 'snooker's Max Verstappen' because everyone wants to see them lose

Ronnie O'Sullivan reckons snooker needs its 'Max Verstappen' to come along and dethrone him - by making sure everyone wants to see them lose.

The Rocket is in action against Scotland's John Higgins in the Shanghai Masters on Thursday morning hoping to win the tournament for the third year on the spin. O'Sullivan has surged back to the top of the game in recent years, winning two of the last World Championships to equal Stephen Hendry's record. He's ranked number one in the world and, at 47, is showing few signs of slowing down.

But he's been critical of snooker's next generation in the past and still feels the sport doesn't have a Max Verstappen figure, the Dutch driver who has taken charge of F1. He believes one of the younger players, such as current World Champion Luca Brecel, teenager Ben Mertens or China's Si Jiahui, need to start racking up the titles and become so good people want to see them lose.

He said: "When Stephen Hendry and Steve Davis were around, they were so much better than everybody else, so it was easy to just pick one.

"Now you have maybe five, 10 or 15 players who are maybe all as good as each other. I think the sport needs someone. I think the sport is always more exciting if one player can dominate, because everybody wants to see that player lose.

"At the moment, there isn’t really one player dominating. There are many, many good players, there’s a lot of very good young players. There are some good players from Belgium. Ben Mertens is good and obviously Luca (Brecel) winning the World Championship.

"China has many, many good players. Si Jiahui played fantastically in the World Championship, a great talent, a great player. It’d be nice to see one of them really dominate. Every sport needs one