For all of Roy Keane’s ‘bad champions’ jibes, Liverpool had more than enough excuses to explain away their ill-fated Premier League title defence back in 2020/21.
That Jurgen Klopp felt the need to parachute in both Ozan Kabak and Ben Davies in the middle of that season said it all, really.
Liverpool lost Thiago Alcantara, Diogo Jota, Joe Gomez, Joel Matip, Jordan Henderson and Naby Keita for long spells.
In fact, that luckless campaign was perhaps summed up best by the fact that Nathaniel Phillips and Rhys Williams – the former now at Derby County and the latter relegated out of the Football League with Morecambe – started more games at centre-half than one Virgil van Dijk.
Van Dijk, of course, would see his season brought to a crushing conclusion thanks to a reckless yet-unpunished Jordan Pickford lunge in October of 2020.
And while Jamie Carragher felt Liverpool only had themselves to blame – a lack of top-quality alternatives, he argued, left Jurgen Klopp short of options – Roy Keane’s typically frank assessment of an eventual third-place finish feels harsh in context.
Frank de Boer thinks Virgil van Dijk has got even better under Arne Slot at Liverpool
It wasn’t just Jurgen Klopp, either, who found himself bemoaning an ACL blow which left his talismanic central defender on the sidelines for seven long months.
Frank de Boer’s Netherlands side crashed out of the delayed 2021 European Championships at the last-16 phase without the totemic Van Dijk at the heart of a ramshackle Oranje backline.
Speaking four years on, De Boer is a little tongue-in-cheek when he suggests that the Netherlands would have conquered the continent with Van Dijk fit and available. But he does envisage a world in which their campaign would have gone on beyond a round two clash with the Czech Republic.
“We would have become European champions [if Van Dijk had been fit],” De Boer sighs, speaking to Via Play. “You just know how important Van Dijk is to a team. At Liverpool and also the Dutch national team, he is a real leader.
“You just miss that, that experience.”
De Boer, one of the finest ball-playing centre-halves of his generation, feels that a now-33-year-old Van Dijk has actually unlocked a new strength under the watch of fellow Dutchman Arne Slot.
Former Feyenoord boss Slot raved about Van Dijk’s supreme passing range when the veteran put pen to paper on a new two-year deal last week. De Boer, meanwhile, thinks that Slot’s preference for a more patient, structured build-up has enabled the £75 million ex-Southampton stopper to take his passing game up another level.
“This year, he is incredibly good,” adds De Boer, a league champion with Ajax and Barcelona in the 1990s. “In the years before that, he played a bit ‘un-Dutch’. A lot of long crossfield balls, which he is fantastic at by the way.
“But now he plays much more in the midfield and that is where [moves often] start. That is really a bonus for Arne Slot.”
Slot says Van Dijk offers a talent he’s never seen before
Van Dijk is now set to stay at Anfield until the summer of 2027.
De Boer’s argument, meanwhile, is reflected by the numbers. Completing 91.6 per cent of his passes in the Premier League across 2024/25, Van Dijk is statistically more accurate with his distribution than in any of his previous campaigns.
“It’s difficult to describe,” Slot said in the build up to Sunday’s 1-0 win at Leicester City. “You know how important he is when you see him as a player. Everyone has complimented him over the years as a defender.
“[But] I mostly watch football and look at possession. He is so, so good at bringing it out from the back. The diagonal passes, the through ball, the leader he is…
“That is something I haven’t worked with before.”
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