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The Notre Dame Stadium in which Liverpool will face Borussia Dortmund this Friday night is flanked by a rather unusual 134ft tall monument. The World of Life mural was designed and added to the Hesburgh Library building in 1964 and depicts Jesus Christ with his arms outstretched, blessing a group of saint and scholars. The sheer size and scale of the erection, and its proximity to such a huge sporting arena, got us thinking about what the next statue Liverpool Football Club builds should look like.

It's fair to say we got a little bit carried away on Photoshop too, so have a look at our designs and let us know which you think is best...

Kristian Walsh: Here's a fun, not-so-well-known fact: the sphinx did not just derive from Egyptian mythology. The creature, said to have the head of a human and body of a lion, was also prominent in Ancient Greece.

While the most famous sculpture of it resides in Egypt, with the Great Sphinx of Giza jostling the Pyramids for tourists' Instagram snaps, the biggest legend of the beast came from Boeotian Thebes, a winged sphinx in Greek mythology. According to legend, she/it would demand an answer to a riddle the Muses taught her: What is it that has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and two-footed and three-footed? Failure to answer correctly saw the person eaten alive.

(The answer, by the way, was man. Or so the Internet says. No food for you tonight, Boeotian Thebes).

What does this brief cultural aside have to do with Mohamed Salah, then? Well, if we are attaching monuments to players, the Egyptian deserves something a little more than the simple fact he's from Cairo, the Sphinx is from Giza, and it all makes perfect, harmonial sense.

The Greek background makes sense then, because Salah has revealed layers to him nobody really ever, truly knew. Certainly not in Liverpool. When he arrived in the summer of 2017, fans thought they were getting what the legend of YouTube and Italian football experts told: a winger who had improved after his brief spell at Chelsea, and one capable of moving to the next level.

But he is so much more than that. He is a striker, who can score 44 goals in his debut season; he is a leader of team-mates, often seen cajoling them on the field, both in times good and bad. Salah also has a humour he exhibits on social media, the dry wit, some would even say common to those who live in Liverpool, which endears him further. He is an icon to a city, a country and a faith; a hero to Liverpool fans, the land of Egypt, and hundreds of thousands of Muslims around the world.

Everybody knew Liverpool were getting a rapid, tricky wide man with an eye for goals. Nobody knew they were getting something far more, far deeper, and far more culturally enriching than that.

Dan Morgan: What better monument is there to take inspiration from than the statue of liberty? And better to replace lady liberty herself than our very own Virgil van Dijk?

The Dutchman is a towering presence wherever he is. He smells fabulous, according to Watford striker Troy Deeney, and all the while offers the opposition absolutely nothing in terms of hope and opportunity.

To Liverpool supporters, our centre-half, our number four is a beacon of hope and enlightenment, so I’ve decided to paint him green and dowse him in a flattering robe so he is there for all the world to seek comfort in.

I’ve not stopped there. As one of my favourite childhood movies is 1989’s classic sequel Ghostbusters II, I couldn’t resist the urge to reenact one of the movies most famous scenes, when the guys decided to tackle the evil painting of medieval tyrant Vigo the Carpathian, and his river of slime, by electrically propelling Liberty and taking her across the Hudson River to the New York museum to rescue a stricken Sigourney Weaver.

I’m not going to ask Virgil to go to such lengths, although I will enjoy watching Armand Traoré iat full-pelt hopelessly chasing a ball he has optimistically knocked past our calm-as-you-like statue in the frivolous hope of outpacing him.

But I will command the statue of Virgil to obey one order prior to relocating to his new home on Liverpool’s Mersey river, and that is to put down his torch and tabula and remove Liverpool’s St. John’s beacon from its foundations and replace the torch with the tower in his right hand, just for effect.

That way, our towering defender can be there every day and night for all to see, keeping us all safe and reassured as he does on the pitch week in, week out.

Dan Austin: It's just so difficult to settle on one person that the Reds should deify. There so many beloved managers who have led their teams to glory, hundreds of legendary players who have scored brilliant goals at Anfield, and a current squad full of European champions to choose from.

In which case, why not built a gigantic sculpture dedicated to multiple people? I envisage it little bit like a Liverpool equivalent of Mount Rushmore, with the heads of four of the club's most figures beaten into a rock face to stare down on the city for all eternity. Now I just need to decide who's going in it.

First up I'm having Divock Origi, because the Belgian's berserk goals made last season by far the fun most fun I've had as a Liverpool fan. I have never laughed more in my life than when he bagged that winner against Everton, so I want his face immortalised in my home city forever.

Next up, it's former Premier League referee Mark Clattenburg. Clatts, as I affectionately refer to him, is the man who gave the Reds three penalties in one match at Old Trafford, and refused to give one for Everton in the last moment of the 2007 Merseyside derby, when Jamie Carragher blatantly triple-suplexed Joleon Lescott to the ground. For those reasons he is my ultimate Liverpool hero.

Also present in this absolute monstrosity is Dirk Kuyt, because who doesn't love a working-class hero with a great big cauliflower face who never stops running? He also scored a load of goals against Everton, which by now I'm sure you realise is why I'm most interested in football.

And finally, we've got Lucci, Daniel Sturridge's dog. Simply because, why the f*ck not? (I would have chosen the kid who ran onto the pitch and gave Messi the finger but no good enough photo of the incident existed for me to Photoshop onto this.)

What a masterpiece this would be. The pinnacle of human artistic expression. The Eiffel tower? Sh*t. Sydney Opera House? B*ollocks. Nothing compared to this.

Get it built. Right now.