Luis Suarez has reiterated that Federico Valverde reminds him of his former Liverpool teammate Steven Gerrard.
Suarez is expected to be part of Uruguay’s squad alongside Valverde at next month’s World Cup finals with the 24-year-old midfielder already playing an integral role for La Celeste and club side Real Madrid.
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Having broken through at Real, joining their academy from boyhood club Peñarol, the native of Montevideo created Vinícius Júnior’s winning goal in last season’s Champions League final against Jurgen Klopp’s team but it was his all-round game that first saw Suarez draw comparisons with Gerrard and those feelings still remain with the former Reds marksman.
“There are newspaper archives, back in 2017, when Fede made his debut in the national team, I already said that he reminded me of Steven Gerrard, who was a teammate of mine at Liverpool,” he told Marca.
“He has similar characteristics: a box to box, with a good shot, change of pace, a lot of runs [into the box]. I don’t want to compare, but the characteristics are similar. I saw Fede coming and he has made great progress, surrounded by great stars. It did him a lot of good.”
To date, Valverde has made over 100 appearances for Real Madrid while collecting no fewer than 44 international caps. His fourth and most recent goal for Uruguay came in a World Cup qualification win over Chile earlier this year.