Virgil van Dijk appeared to mock Aurelien Tchouameni during Liverpool\u2019s victory over Real Madrid on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n
The French midfielder was at the centre of the match\u2019s most debated moment when the ball seemed to strike his arm inside the box just before half-time. Although the referee initially awarded a free kick to Liverpool, he overturned the call after reviewing the incident on the pitchside VAR monitor. BBC reporter Dale Johnson later explained the reasoning behind the decision to restart play with a dropped ball to Madrid, but many still found the ruling confusing, especially as the score was goalless at the time.<\/p>\n
Later in the match, when Liverpool won a free kick, Van Dijk took the opportunity to tease Tchouameni. Spotting him in the defensive wall, the Reds captain held out his hands as if to suggest, \u201cYou\u2019re good with your arms \u2014 try blocking it again.\u201d The Real Madrid midfielder seemed to notice and playfully lifted his elbow in response.<\/p>\n
Despite putting in a solid individual performance \u2014 completing all his dribbles, 91% of his passes, and winning most of his duels \u2014 Tchouameni was still overshadowed by Liverpool\u2019s midfield pair, Ryan Gravenberch and Alexis Mac Allister, who dominated the game. Deep down, the Frenchman might quietly admit he was lucky to escape giving away a penalty \u2014 something Van Dijk didn\u2019t let him forget.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Virgil van Dijk appeared to mock Aurelien Tchouameni during Liverpool\u2019s victory over Real Madrid on Tuesday night. The French midfielder was at the centre of the match\u2019s most debated moment when the ball seemed to strike his arm inside the box just before half-time. Although the referee initially awarded a free kick to Liverpool, he …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":53699,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/van-dijk-tchouameni-768x431.jpg.webp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53698"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53700,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53698\/revisions\/53700"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/53699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}