Liverpool’s Next Captain and the Arsenal Comparison

The article argues that Liverpool’s next captain is becoming increasingly clear, with Virgil van Dijk’s eventual successor likely to emerge from the club’s young leadership core rather than from any external signing. It notes that Liverpool have quietly built a group of players who already behave like leaders on and off the pitch, giving the manager multiple credible options when the armband next changes hands.

Central to the piece is the contrast with Arsenal. The “gulf” between the clubs is described as having nothing to do with talent and everything to do with the depth and maturity of Liverpool’s internal leadership structure. While Arsenal have often changed captains and struggled for a stable hierarchy, Liverpool are portrayed as having a more robust culture in which responsibility is naturally shared and future captains are being developed early.

The article highlights how several Liverpool players already assume quasi-captain roles in different areas: some drive standards in training, others set the emotional tone on matchdays, and a few act as tacticians on the pitch. This distributed leadership means that, when the time comes, passing on the armband should feel like a formal recognition of an existing reality rather than a risky experiment.

According to the piece, this is why the identity of Liverpool’s next captain is “becoming clear”: the candidates distinguish themselves through consistency, mentality, and their ability to influence others, not just their technical quality. The gap to Arsenal, therefore, is framed not as a question of which squad has better players, but which club has done a better job of building a durable leadership core that can sustain success across cycles.