Jarell Quansah is redefining sexy defending & Liverpool couldn’t be more grateful

Football has well and truly gone mad, because these days the sexier a centre-back is, the better. And Liverpool have struck gold in that department with their latest youth star.

The days of managers wanting their central defenders to have absolutely nothing to do with the football are behind us.

Instead, those who can pull off Cruyff turns to send strikers packing and ping passes like a prime Pirlo are heralded as greats, even if they’re unable to put a forward in row Z with a tackle strong enough to send a rocket ship into space.

Thankfully for Jurgen Klopp, though, Jarell Quansah has proven to be a pretty nifty blend of both types.

In other words, he’s an absolute f*cking nightmare to play against. The kind of player who makes you want to turn around and get back in the car on a Sunday morning, knowing full well you’re spending the next two hours locked up with no way out.

Quansah embodies that and his Player of the Match performance against Bournemouth in the Carabao Cup was merely the next step towards stardom as he rewrites the script in Liverpool’s defensive setup.

Tall, bullish and extremely handsome, the 20-year-old has drastically gone from strength to strength in 2023, from his first foray into senior football on loan at Bristol, to knocking on the door of the Reds’ first team and not leaving until he got a answer.

With his emergence, those days of desperately scrambling for a defender and signing Ben Davies – who we still don’t believe ever existed – feel like a very distant memory.

As Jurgen Klopp tries to regenerate his Liverpool side and turn them into title challengers once again, Quansah is the perfect next step forward.

An England international at all youth levels, it’s rather frightening how much composure he already plays with, from firing passes through the lines to trusting his positioning and being able to anticipate forwards like a veteran.

Seriously, while naturally a little rough around the edges, Quansah has the full package – including height that we’re incredibly envious of.

Jarell Quansah v Bournemouth:

You literally couldn’t have built a prospective CB better than what we have in young Jarell.

Another MOTM display from our young colossus 👏

[@1947production]pic.twitter.com/r4rpaLFHXJ

— Watch LFC (@Watch_LFC) November 2, 2023

How do some people get so lucky? The guy is a joke.

What’s so impressive about Quansah is not just his freakish ability to split open lines like a hot knife through butter with his passing, nor is it his obscene anticipation and positioning.

It’s his confidence to try those things when it could all go pear-shaped and leave him looking like a big, gangly bag of nerves.

He looks exactly the opposite, however. Klopp has got an absolute gem on his hands.

When you marry such sought-after attributes to his extremely imposing physicality, it’s scary hours. Quansah plays like a short yet extremely nifty midfielder but stands at six foot three and can get his head or body to just about anything he fancies.

“A really good game, wow,” Were his manager’s words after his POTM performance against The Cherries.

“I told him now, he was really over the moon about the game. He was concentrated, strong in the tackles, reading the game super well.”

It’s still early days for Quansah who only made his Liverpool debut in August, but now is the time to take good momentum and turn it into a sustained push to break the mould and force his way into Klopp’s back four.

He’s got all of the tools to become a great.

By Mitch Wilks

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