Is Virgil van Dijk good or is Moussa Sissoko bad? An investigation.

Liverpool squeaked past Tottenham on Sunday, but was Spurs’ biggest miss a case of Virgil van Dijk’s brilliance or Moussa Sissoko’s lack thereof?

There’s no doubt Tottenham are one of Europe’s most devastating teams on the counter-attack, and few players make them as deadly on a breakaway as Heung-min Son. So when a few brilliant, quick-fire passes led Spurs on a break with Son and Moussa Sissoko bearing down on Liverpool’s (the world’s?) best defender, Virgil van Dijk, there was one priority: Make sure Son doesn’t get the ball.

Defending a one-on-two counter-attack against a top-flight Premier League club is a backs-to-the-wall job, but it’s imperative for a defender to take advantage of the blood they smell in the water. And from Sissoko’s body language, the man clearly wanted nothing to do with this potential game-breaking chance with the score level at 1-1.

Van Dijk, who has undoubtedly been the class of the Premier League in defense, could smell his fear. Just as a goalkeeper puts all the pressure on a striker before a penalty kick, van Dijk took full advantage of the weight on Sissoko’s shoulders.

Because this season, Sissoko still has zero goals in Premier League play. None. Nada. Son? He’s second on the team with 11 goals and is in the midst of a spectacular season for Spurs. That’s obviously where Sissoko wanted the ball to go, and he arguably could have squared Son up sooner in the attack.

But he didn’t. And that brief hesitation — we’re talking milliseconds here, because that’s how quickly this game is played, especially on breakaways — proved costly. Thereafter, van Dijk completely closed off Sissoko’s option to pass to the clinical Son, forcing the issue on the 29-year-old French international.

That said, the play was Sissoko’s to make. Yes, he had to take it on his left foot, and, yes, he had potentially the best defender in the world bearing down on him. Yet this was his golden opportunity to grab his first goal of the season and put the critics to rest with a crucial, potentially winning, goal against one of the league’s top two teams.

Instead, the fear van Dijk smelled in Sissoko manifested itself in a finish that lacked all composure. Sissoko blew the ball way over the goal, and, with it, Tottenham’s chances at a victory.

It’s hard not to feel horrible for Sissoko, who has taken this miss personally. A high-pressure, weak-foot chance is one that many strikers could easily blow over the bar, but because it came at such a critical moment of the match in a one-on-two, it’s also not hard to understand why Sissoko is catching plenty of stick from fans. Davie Selke and Robert Lewandowski, for example, had much worse misses this weekend, but Selke’s team was already losing 5-0 and Bayern Munich were in a less high-profile game than Tottenham.

Though Sissoko is taking the accountability he needs to for the miss, which comes in the midst of a poor season for him, this play was more about van Dijk making the most out of a bad situation, weighing his options quickly, making the play and forcing the issue on the weaker attacking player. Van Dijk’s intelligence in defense is almost unparalleled, and he’s kryptonite to counter-attacks. (Well, except for those involving Serge Gnabry … he’s something else.)