On Monday night, Liverpool rising star centre half Jeremy Jacquet got his debut as new head coach Zinedine Zidane handed the 21-year-old an opportunity with the French national team that by all accounts Jacquet took in outstanding fashion.
After the match, though, Jacquet wasn’t getting too excited by it, celebrating the clean sheet and 1-0 victory over Belgium but saying there had been a few moments he felt he could have done better—even if they would’ve been difficult to spot for those watching
from home or in the stands.
“As a defender a clean sheet is the best thing you can do, so with the win at the end I can only be happy,” he said following the match.
“But to say that I’m satisfied? No, I can think back to two or three attacking balls and think I could have done much better with my passing. But despite two or three turnovers, I’m generally happy—and we’re leaving with three points and the clean sheet.”
Jacquet arrived at Liverpool over the summer as a very highly regarded young centre half, but last season was his first as a regular starter for Rennes in Ligue 1, and even then he played just 21 games after an injury derailed the second half of his season soon after the Reds agreed a delayed £60M deal in January.
The season before, he had played 11 games with Rennes and 17 with Clermont in Ligue 2. There was certainly some skepticism, then, that he would be ready to make an impact at the Premier League level from minute one.
That’s exactly what he’s done, though, almost instantly establishing himself as a viable first choice partner to Virgil van Dijk in defence for Liverpool head coach Andoni Iraola—and now perhaps too for Zidane with France given how good he looked on Monday.
“The coach told me two days before I would be playing,” Jacquet added. “He likes to give everyone the chance to prove themselves, and so far everyone has taken that chance. Overall, he’s very close to the team, and he always speaks calmly.”
