Virgil van Dijk reflects on his ruptured ACL from the 2020-2021 season | OneFootball

Virgil van Dijk is without doubt one of, if not the, greatest defenders in world football at the moment but he has suffered huge heartache in his career – none greater than the ACL injury he sustained during the 2020-2021 season.

Speaking with WHOOP, our No.4 said: “As a football player, a knee injury is the worst that you can get. You’ve set a level and it’s about trying to get back to that level as quickly as possible”.

The injury sustained at Goodison Park will forever be referenced to whenever anyone reviews the career of the captain of Holland, with many pinpointing it as a date that his powers started to decrease.

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Whether he has seen a drop in performances or ability, or the whole team has dropped in quality around him, the level at which the now 31-year-old was performing could have (and probably should have) seen him win the Ballon d’Or.

Clinching the award would have made him just the fourth defender (after Fabio Cannavaro, Matthias Sammer and Franz Beckenbauer) to do so and that shows how well he was playing at that time.

Now though, our supporters and Jurgen Klopp have nothing but full faith in our defender to keep our back-line in check and his leadership is a huge part of his game – not just his raw ability.

With Ibou Konate, we have a brilliant defensive duo for the new campaign and let’s hope that it will be enough to see us clinch some more silverware next year.

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