London: Virgil van Dijk says he woke the next morning thinking not of the five goals Liverpool scored but the two late ones they conceded. Like everyone at the club’s Melwood training ground, the world’s most expensive defender was denying himself the euphoria a 5-2 Champions League semi-final first-leg win would normally bring.
“Those two goals were still in my mind. It’s still a good lead but it could have been a little bit better,” he says of the moment he opened his eyes on Wednesday. “I know we still need to be happy with a 5-2 lead to take to Rome. As a defender, to concede the goals we conceded — it’s just a bit frustrating. And after the game as well, you think — it could have been 5-0, then we’ll see what’s going to happen over there, and they can try everything, but we know we’re going to score at least one goal, then they can’t do anything.”
With Liverpool on the cusp of a Champions League final in Kiev, the focus shifts from their devil’s trident of attackers to the defenders charged with stopping Roma winning 3-0. And this is where Liverpool could yield their first big dividend on the £75 million (Dh381 million) paid to Southampton in January for Van Dijk, who instantly brings to mind Bill Shankly’s invitation to the press when he signed Ron Yeats: “Take a walk around my centre-half, gentlemen, he’s a colossus.”
Van Dijk is an immensely imposing figure with the potential to join Liverpool’s centre-back pantheon, with Yeats, Tommy Smith, Alan Hansen, Mark Lawrenson and Jamie Carragher. In his first major interview since moving to Anfield, Van Dijk radiated the kind of cool authority that prompts Jurgen Klopp to say: “His body language is brilliant. He looks like a leader, like a warrior, already like a Liverpool player — that’s good news.”
For the rest of us, Liverpool versus Roma was a carnival, a celebration of Mohammad Salah’s talent and generally a good night to be alive. But at Melwood the next day, the mood was cloudier. The sadness over the attack on a Liverpool fan, Sean Cox, outside Anfield was palpable, and there was sympathy too for Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain over his serious knee injury.
Against the backdrop of Cox’s fight for life, the concession of two late goals hardly mattered, but the new spirit driving Liverpool on in Europe was also visible, and Van Dijk is at the heart of it.
As Liverpool’s new defensive colossus, he gets a good view of Salah, Roberto (“Bobby”) Firmino and Sadio Mane, who reduced Roma’s back-line to splinters. “They’re so clinical,” Van Dijk says. “You don’t need to give them a chance, because they are so lively, so sharp in front of the goal. With giving assists to each other, no one is selfish, everyone wants to do it for each other.
“The work they put in up front as well is phenomenal. It’s getting a bit under the radar — the work they do defensively. Obviously, the goals have been unbelievable, but if you see them working for all of us, that helps a lot.
“It’s a nightmare to play against those three. If you’re a ball-playing centre-back who wants to have the ball, you know those three are going to keep pressing you, not once, twice, but for the whole game. You don’t want to come up against those three.”
No, you don’t, but Roma will have to, once more, at the Stadio Olimpico on Wednesday night, where they must stop Salah, Mane and Firmino scoring again while also landing three blows of their own. “I definitely have that feeling that we’re always hopefully going to score,” Van Dijk says. “We just need to play our game. We had the same situation a bit against City [in the quarter-finals, when they took a 3-0 lead to Manchester]. We don’t need to go there thinking we only need to defend.”
Van Dijk has been instrumental in Liverpool’s developmental surge in 2018 and says he observed signs of the growing chemistry before the Roma game: “Since I’ve arrived I’ve seen it a couple of times — the Man City [Premier League] game at home, when I didn’t play, and we won 4-3, and when we played Porto away, and the two legs against Man City as well, which were fantastic to witness, and see what everyone is capable of when everyone is 100 per cent at it.
“I’ve only been here for three months, but it feels like I’ve been here at least for a season, and I know almost everyone already as much as possible.
“Everyone gets along with one another, everyone wants to fight for each other. And there is also that joy within the team that helps a lot in the games, too. It’s just like everyone’s coming here with so much joy to train, and obviously the games, winning helps as well. There’s just a great atmosphere and motivation to keep going and work hard for each other.”
The Anfield crowd plays its part: “I think it just keeps pushing you on. When you’re 1-0 up or 2-0 up, sometimes you just need to slow the game a little bit down, but obviously, with the fans and the emotion, you keep going and keep going. It pushes you on in a positive way. I like the pressure.”
Like Klopp, Van Dijk stops short of hanging the best-player-in-the-world garland on Salah but places him “up there”.
He says: “You need to be honest. This season. Mo has been unbelievable. The numbers don’t lie, with the goals he’s scored, as a winger, and the assists he’s been giving. It’s been one hell of a season for him already. You don’t know what can happen.
“He deserves a lot already for the way he’s showed himself in his first season for Liverpool. He’s definitely up there, right now, with his current form.
“Those two in Spain [Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi] — they have been doing it for years, consistently, so that’s maybe something for Mo to have in the future. I hope so.”
From Van Dijk, you learn how Liverpool really operate, from front to back.
“It’s everyone. Everyone’s doing their job,” he tells me. “The ball needs to be in the goal — and Mo did that, and Bobby and Sadio. The work starts with them. Then going back through the midfield and the defenders — hopefully not the goalkeeper. We know we need to do it altogether, because even when we want to press, if you don’t keep a high line, you can’t press, because then they can play out. Everyone can be happy if we win the game because it’s a team job.
“We have a couple of good goalscorers who do their job very well — but it’s all together, yeah. The sessions we do, the tactical meetings we have — it’s all from high quality. Very good, and I really enjoy working here.”
Roma, he says, changed their approach after half-time at Anfield, playing “a bit more direct, to two strikers. So the pressure was already there. You can concede, because they are a top side as well, but to concede two in the last 10 minutes is just frustrating. You’re going to think about it, because it was such a great night, great game, and a great result to take with us to Rome. But to concede two like that is for everyone a little blow on a fantastic evening.
— The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2018
