“I know it sounds cliched, but Virgil van Dijk,” Liam Morrison laughs over the phone when asked which defender he models himself on.



“Ever since watching him at Celtic I knew he had the potential to be the best in the world, and he’s become that. It’s how comfortable he is on the ball, how commanding he is in the air, how good he is at rallying his team-mates. You look at the stats about him not being dribbled past, it’s incredible for a centre half to have those kinds of stats. Against Messi, Sterling, Aguero, no one’s got past him. You can tell he’s a leader on the park. That’s what I want to be.”



Morrison, who only turned 16 in April, signed a three-year professional contract with Bayern Munich last month, leaving Celtic’s youth set-up in the process. The Bavarian titans presented an ambitious plan to develop Morrison into the best defender in the world one day. To become his generation’s Van...