Virgil van Dijk means business every single time he steps onto a football pitch…as one of his Liverpool teammates discovered on Sunday!
The Reds captain has been a transformative presence at Anfield during his seven years at the club, with his on-field leadership making him the obvious choice to replace Jordan Henderson as captain prior to the 2023/24 season.
Such have been his performance levels that Micah Richards has labelled him ‘one of the Premier League greats’, and that praise certainly isn’t hyperbole based on the standards that the Dutchman has set throughout his career.
The towering Van Dijk routinely ventures forward whenever Liverpool have a corner kick, just as he did during the 5-0 win over West Ham yesterday.
At one point during the first half, footage captured from the stands at the London Stadium shows the 33-year-old pushing someone out of the way to try and get on the end of Alexis Mac Allister’s delivery…and that someone was Joe Gomez!
As the Reds’ number 2 picked himself up off the turf once the ball had been headed over the crossbar and out for a goal kick, he had a look across at his captain, who was already retreating to his own half of the pitch to be ready for the next passage of play.
Unfortunately that wasn’t Gomez’s only time going to ground yesterday, with the defender having to be substituted with a hamstring injury shortly before the interval, and he inadvertently took a bit of a clatter from Van Dijk.
With Ibrahima Konate also sidelined and Jarell Quansah being the only other senior centre-back available to Liverpool, the skipper’s importance to the cause has heightened even further since the win over West Ham, and he’s perhaps the player that the Reds can least afford to lose right now.
Even if (heaven forbid) Mo Salah were to be sidelined, at least Arne Slot has an immense quality of depth in attack to call upon, whereas the defence is almost down to the bare bones.
If LFC are to go on and win the Premier League this season, the standard-setting Van Dijk will have been instrumental to that triumph.
You can view Van Dijk clattering into Gomez below, via footballfanz6 on TikTok:
@footballfanz6 Bro, that’s your teammate! Van Dijk out here pushing his own Liverpool player— Bro is just TOO focused #westham #westhamunited #westhamvsliverpool #liverpool #liverpoolfc #lfc #virgilvandijk #virgil #liverpoolfans #premierleague #epl #football #futbol #soccer ♬ original sound – FootballFanz
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