Van Dijk, Ramos, Maldini: Who is the best centre-back in football history?

Michael Owen was asked how Liverpool’s centre-back Virgil van Dijk compares to fellow BT Sport pundit Rio Ferdinand before Jurgen Klopp’s side faced Villarreal on Tuesday night.

Not only did Owen suggest that Van Dijk was better than Ferdinand but he even went as far as to suggest he’s the best defender to have ever played the game.

“I’d go further and say he’s the best centre-half of all time,” Owen replied. “He probably scored a few more goals, we’re not talking much because we’re talking about the greatest here. Rio was the best centre-back I had ever played with. Van Dijk, as a centre-forward I look at him and think ‘what do you do against him?’ He’s bigger, faster, stronger than everyone, he’s brilliant on the ball, scores goals, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Is Van Dijk the best centre-back in football history?

It’s certainly a big claim but it’s not quite as ridiculous as it seemed a few years ago.

But we’ve gone further than Owen. Instead of just naming the greatest defender of all time, we’ve decided to rank some of the best defenders ever from ‘Overrated’ to the ‘GOAT’ using Tiermaker.

Let’s get a bit of housekeeping out of the way.

Firstly, we haven’t selected the players that make the list. If there’s a player or players missing, blame the creator of the Tiermaker, not us.

Also, when it comes to the tiers they should be taken with a pinch of salt. Every defender included in the list was probably ‘world-class’ at some stage in their career. But just to separate the best from the rest, we have categories such as ‘Very good’ and ‘Decent’. We’re aware that all the defenders were probably a bit more than ‘Decent’ but it would be a bit boring if everyone was in ‘World Class’.

So, disclaimers out of the way,