Virgil van Dijk: Embracing Liverpool's Transition
Virgil van Dijk has lived through enough Liverpool cycles to know one when he sees it. Title winners, nearly-men, cup collectors, emotional farewells – he has worn all of it. Now, under Andoni Iraola and without some of the club’s modern pillars, he is calling this season what it is.
A transition.
“It definitely feels like a bit of a transition, for sure,” the Liverpool captain admitted, with the kind of bluntness that tends to follow a turbulent summer. Two years on from lifting the Premier League under Arne Slot, Liverpool are starting again, their recent decline forcing a reset that nobody at Anfield could really dodge.
Slot’s departure after a poor campaign has opened the door to Iraola’s high-energy, aggressive style. Around him, the dressing room has been stripped of some of its most familiar voices. Mo Salah has gone. So has Andy Robertson, a full-back who came to embody the club’s intensity and edge. The spine remains, but the aura has changed.
Van Dijk is under no illusions about the scale of the task.
“It’s down to everyone associated with Liverpool to make sure that we’re building something that will be successful for the years to come,” he said. The message was clear: this is not a free hit. “This year we want to be successful, but there’s a lot of work to be done still, and we all know how difficult it is to be playing in the Premier League, League Cup, FA Cup, Champions League, so we need everyone at their best.”
That’s the reality of life at Liverpool. You do not get to quietly rebuild. You rebuild while chasing trophies on four fronts, under the glare of a global fanbase that measures seasons in silver.
If the club is entering a new phase, van Dijk himself is being pushed into a new conversation. Not about his quality, but his age. At 35, with another marathon campaign ahead, the question arrived: can he really go again, every week, every three days?
His reaction carried a flash of competitive fire.
“Yes. What, are you going to say I'm 35 years old and I can't do it?” he snapped back, before explaining the standards he sets for himself. “At the end of the day you have to look after yourself, I won't say I'm lucky, but you have to do everything in your power, and that's the bare minimum for me, because I feel the responsibility to be ready each and every game.”
This is not a defender easing towards the exit. It is one doubling down on the grind. Van Dijk talked about the routine behind the performances – the unseen work that allows a veteran to keep pace with a league that never slows down.
“Every three days I'm doing everything in my power at home, at the training ground, to be ready to play a game. So, for me, I feel good. I'm also a late bloomer, so maybe… It is what it is, I feel fine, and I want to be part of a successful Liverpool team.”
The “late bloomer” line was telling. Van Dijk has always carried himself with the calm of a player who arrived at the top level on his own terms, not as a teenage prodigy but as a defender who climbed steadily and then stayed there. Now he is betting that same durability can carry him through one more demanding cycle.
What has not changed is the weight he feels when he pulls on the shirt.
“I want to make all the fans proud all over the world that support us wherever we go,” he said. “And that's by winning games, that's by showing what it means to wear that shirt every time, and that's for me the bare minimum anyway, so I will keep going.”
A new manager, a reshaped squad, the end of the Salah and Robertson era. Liverpool are stepping into the unknown. Van Dijk, 35 and defiant, is staking his claim to lead them through it – not as a symbol of what they were, but as a standard-bearer for what they still intend to become.
