Ben Foster has made the case for one Liverpool player to be tried in a new role, even if he admitted that the tweak could be ‘controversial’.
The former England goalkeeper was selecting a team of Rising Stars for the Premier League’s official YouTube channel, and he included Dominik Szoboszlai among his XI.
However, instead of selecting the Hungarian in his conventional number 8 position (matching his shirt number), he picked the 23-year-old as a defensive midfielder.
In explaining that surprise selection, Foster outlined: “This is where it starts to get a little bit controversial. I’m gonna go for Dominik Szoboszlai at Liverpool. Now listen, I know he’s not your traditional CDM – I know this – but he is a box-to-box midfielder. He gets forward, he gets back, he works hard.
“All I’m gonna do is say to him before the game starts, ‘Listen, today is not your job to be getting forward so much. Stay in that hole, you’ve got the quality. I trust you, you trust me, do what I tell you’. That’s what he’ll do. He’ll do that for me so I’m gonna pick him.”
Szoboszlai has lined out in a variety of midfield and wide roles during his career – he was even picked at centre-forward once – but he’s never played in the number 6 position (Transfermarkt).
Nor do his attributes correspond with what you’d associate with the main strengths of a holding midfielder – over the past 12 months, he ranks in the bottom 20% of positional peers in Europe’s five main leagues for tackles, interceptions and clearances per 90 minutes (FBref).
We can’t see Arne Slot taking up Foster’s tactical suggestion for the Hungary captain any time soon.
You can view Foster’s comments below (from 8:13), via Premier League on YouTube: