Virgil van Dijk posted a defiant message on social media after an update on his injury status. The Dutchman suffered a horrible tackle against Everton.
Liverpool announced on Sunday that Virgil van Dijk will be out with injury for some time. Van Dijk requires surgery on his knee after going off injured in the Merseyside derby.
We don’t know exactly how long he’ll be gone for, though. Liverpool can only say there’s ‘no specific timescale’ for a return, meaning we can only assume it’ll be a lengthy absence.
That’s devastating, of course, and brings about all sorts of worries. How will Liverpool cope? Can they challenge for the title without their star defender? And will Van Dijk be the same player once he’s back?
We’ll have to wait on the first two but the player himself has tried to allay fears on the latter.
Van Dijk speaks
Van Dijk took to Instagram to post a message to fans. He thanked everyone for their support before telling everyone that he’ll be back better than ever.
“Despite the obvious disappointment, I’m a firm believer that within difficulty lies opportunity and with God’s help I’m going to make sure I return better, fitter and stronger than ever before,” he wrote.
Before going on to add:
“I’d like to thank everyone for the messages of support, it’s meant a huge amount to me and my family, and I’ll now be doing everything possible to support my teammates in any way I can ahead of a big few weeks ahead as I take my own recovery day by day. I’ll be back.”
They’re fighting words, certainly. Van Dijk is clearly determined to not let this get him down and to come back as good as he can possibly be.
And it will be a fight. He’s 29, after all, and that makes returning tougher than if he were a young player. We also don’t know the outright severity of the injury or how the surgery will go.
But regardless of it all, we’re not worried about Van Dijk coming back a lesser player. He’s too intelligent on the pitch and too authoritative to come back a poor player.
He’ll still be a key part of this Liverpool team, no matter how the injury affects him.
Receive a digest of our best Liverpool content each week direct to your mailbox
