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Dutch international defender Virgil van Dijk is looking to win his Champions League title last season with Liverpool enough to beat the Argentine giants Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo in the race for the best footballer on the continent.
UEFA will announce Luka Modric's successor Thursday in Monaco on the sidelines of the draw for the group stage of the Champions League.
A panel of 80 club coaches from the UEFA Champions League and the Europa League, as well as 55 journalists, chose the trio to compete for the trophy. Van Dyck, 28, deserved to be on the winners' list, winning the Champions League at Tottenham's final. He was named best player in the Premier League, becoming the first defenseman to win since John Terry with Chelsea in 2005.
The Dutchman also won the European Super Cup with Liverpool over Chelsea on penalties, as well as leading the Netherlands to second place in the league title of the first edition of the European League. Messi, 32, led Barcelona to La Liga with 36 goals and the league's top scorer with 12 goals, but was eliminated from Brazil's Copa America semi-final.
For his part, Ronaldo managed his first season with Italian Juventus to win the league title, monopolized last season for the eighth consecutive season (Portugal scored 21 goals in the league and was fourth on the list of scorers).
The Portuguese, who has been named Italy's best player, led his country to win the first edition of the European Championship, but his career with Juventus in the Champions League has ended in quarters. In the final match against Ajax Amsterdam, Dutch, while his opponent Messi reached the semifinal before eliminating Liverpool, led by Van Dyck, achieved very impressive numbers, notably by not allowing any opponent to dodge more than 64 games, including the finals of the Champions League 2018 and 2019.
Last year, Modric won the Champions League with Real Madrid and finished second in Croatia when he won the World Player of the Year title.
In the women's prize, the Danish Wolfsburg player Bernel Harder.
Messi was the first winner of this award, launched by UEFA in 2011 before winning it again in 2015, while Andres Iniesta in 2012 and Ribery in 2013 before Ronaldo's monopoly in 2014, 2016 and 2017.
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