“You Have To Give It Everything [When Playing At Liverpool] – And You Have To Be Humble”: Virgil van Dijk Is On The Verge Of Something New

The Dutch defender is among the most decorated footballers of his generation, adored in his adopted home of Liverpool and revered across the globe. As his club and national teams begin fresh eras, so does the 35-year-old. But one thing remains – an insatiable appetite for success.

There’s a quiet irony to meeting Virgil van Dijk in Greater Manchester. It is, after all, on the other side of the M62, amid docklands and Beatles memorabilia, where the man is truly beloved. He’s an adopted Scouser, a symbol of hope and humility, a man deified as the captain and leader of Liverpool FC and the Dutch national team. A footballer recognised as one of the most influential and impactful defenders in the annals of the sport. 

The sky is an unremarkable grey when I arrive at an inconspicuous photography studio in Salford on the first Tuesday of September. Van Dijk’s Man About Town cover shoot is already well underway. Years of experience of kit launches and brand partnerships have given the 35-year-old an ease in front of a lens befitting a model or actor. He’s laid-back in this environment; one minute he’s the muse of photographer Kosmas Pavlos, the next he’s singing along to Tems, or chatting amicably to the creative team on set. His signature mane of jet-black hair is slicked back into a neat bun, his lean 6’5” physique sharply sculpted, his handshake firm but kind. He carries an unassuming dominance, an assured charisma that cannot be feigned. 

The photoshoot finishes, and everyone else leaves. Van Dijk leads the way up a flight of stairs into the building’s bar. It’s a decadent space, velvety in timbre, decorated with burgundy walls and antique accents. The surround-sound speakers buzz gently as we enter, spinning Gilbert O’Sullivan’s 1972 classic, “Alone Again (Naturally)”. The lounge is replete with cosy armchairs and sofas, and there are no other customers present, but at Van Dijk’s discretion, we take up position on high bar-side stools. He jokes about ordering an Amaretto Sour, but we stick with water. 

It’s a busy week for Van Dijk, after all. This morning, he and his wife Rike dropped their children – they have four – at school.  Then, he trained and attended a tactical session ahead of a Friday night crunch match against Ipswich Town. As we cross paths, the Premier League 2026/27 season is only two weekends old, and it’s been a frustrating start to the new campaign for Liverpool with two consecutive 2-2 draws versus Newcastle United and Nottingham Forest, respectively. But the summer transfer window slams shut tonight, and “then we can really start working,” Van Dijk says.

It’s Van Dijk’s ninth full season on Merseyside, having joined the club from Southampton in January 2018. This coming term will be a period of transition and evolution for The Reds. Van Dijk’s fellow Dutchman, former head coach Arne Slot, was given the sack at the end of a disappointing last season that saw Liverpool finish a tepid fifth, and so there’s a new manager in the dugout. The “very hard-working” Andoni Iraola, a young, exciting Spanish coach, arrives from Bournemouth with a modern, mercurial footballing philosophy that is scintillating in prospect but will take time to adjust to. And there’s a revamped squad. Club legend Mohamed Salah has left, as has the majority of the generation-defining Premier and Champions League-winning team that shone in the late 2010s/early 2020s under the stewardship of Jürgen Klopp. 

To kickstart replacing the departing cohort, the club have spent big on a who’s who of Europe’s hottest rising stars, such as Swedish striker Alexander Isak, Van Dijk’s new centre-back partner Jérémy Jacquet, and thrill-a-minute winger Bradley Barcola. “He was on fire in training today,” Van Dijk grins coyly on the first impressions of the latter, whose signing for a reported £123 million was confirmed just days prior to our meeting. “Him coming in for a lot of money is not something he can do anything about. He showed what he can do in France. He’s a quality player, and I think he’ll do well.”

With so many talented but as-yet unseasoned new personnel, things around the training ground are “different”, and there’s more onus on Van Dijk than ever to guide the team away from potentially choppy waters into a seabed of success. But responsibility is something he has never shied away from. On the pitch, he commands with battle-hardened physicality from the centre of defence. Where many players in his position are rugged and aggressive, Van Dijk is elegant, composed and technical in his style. He attributes his cultured approach to playing football on the streets in his childhood, wanting  “to be Ronaldinho”.

Off the pitch, he’s a calming voice, an experienced, prudent presence in the dressing room. An advisor to his manager, an elder brother figure to his teammates, and an emblem of class and professionalism to young boys and girls daring to dream of becoming a footballer in an increasingly toxic media landscape and high-stakes in-game environment. “You want to be an example in how you deal with things, how you look at life,” he says. “It’s a responsibility that I feel and one that I really want to understand. I’m proud of who I am in that sense. It keeps me grounded within a world that can be pretty chaotic at times.” 

The summer certainly had some whirlwind moments for Van Dijk. He spent much of it across the Atlantic captaining the Dutch national team in their World Cup campaign. Although “a great experience,” his North American adventure was cut short when the Netherlands were knocked out on penalties in the Round of 32 against Morocco. His international career in large part has been near-misses and ‘What if…?’ moments – such as the painful semi-final ejection against England at Euro 2024 – but Van Dijk finds freedom in the frustration. For him, football is as much about losing well as it is about winning. Granted, the World Cup didn’t go in their favour, “but that’s just life sometimes,” he shrugs with a wistful yet acquiescent smile. “It’s just acceptance. Sometimes another team is the winning side.”

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Post-World-Cup rumours swirled in the media that Van Dijk was considering hanging up his international boots. But having quickly shut off those whispers, under new manager Xavi Hernández, he’s looking ahead to the Euros in two years and recently became the 11th Dutch player to amass three digits' worth of appearances for his nation. 

It’s the latest landmark achievement in a distinguished career that includes finishing runner-up to only Messi in the Ballon d’Or and being crowned UEFA Men’s Player of the Year in 2019, not to mention winning almost every trophy possible across his career at Celtic and Liverpool. Approaching what most footballers would consider the twilight years of their career, Van Dijk shows no sign of stopping, or even slowing down. In fact,  the opposite. “For me, it has always been the same,” he affirms robustly on his desire and hunger to win. “I’m on the pitch, I’m in the gym, I’m at home, always with the same hunger for success. I have that responsibility to our fans, and to myself as well. I'm not going out there to be half-hearted or to think, ‘Oh yeah, it's different now.’ I'm playing a game. I’m training to win, and that won't ever change.” 

The legacy of Van Dijk is now incontrovertible. But he wasn’t always a globally revered athlete, and his journey to the pinnacle of football is unconventional. Born in Breda, near the Belgian border, his parents separated when he was still young, and he has been estranged from his father ever since (the reason it’s simply ‘Virgil’ on the back of his shirt rather than his surname). Hellen, his “amazing” mum, is of Surinamese lineage – a side to him that he’s proud of, growing up “with Suriname roots, Suriname values – being hard-working, grounded.” Also, having a little bit of a temper, he explains, but in a good way. “The only thing I don't have is that I can’t cook,” he chuckles before adding, “my mum can, though.”

As the eldest child of a single mum, with a younger brother two years his junior who “looked up to me and still does”, and a sister 10 years younger, Van Dijk had to mature quickly, playing a fundamental role in his family’s welfare while juggling his burgeoning sporting pursuits. He joined the academy at his local team Willem II when he was seven or eight, and continued there throughout his teenage years. “I’d see the first team and think that it’d be amazing to play there, but I never thought about a realistic goal. I trained, I played. I was struggling a bit, but then at around 15, I had a growth spurt, and I really started to develop.”

As he neared adulthood and the outlines of the player he’d become started to thicken, FC Groningen – an established team in the Netherlands’ top division, Eredivisie – came knocking. It was his first time living alone without his family in a new city hours' drive from his home, a formative and foundational experience. “Step-by-step, I came to where I am. That journey makes me very proud, and it shows others: Don’t look too far ahead. There are different ways to reach something really special.” 

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The Herculean hurdle of Van Dijk’s life came when he was 20 years old. He was admitted to hospital after undiagnosed appendicitis advanced, and he had to undergo an urgent, lifesaving operation. Beyond the tangible scrape with death, it was a procedure that took him months to recover from, abating his physical and footballing development. “It was very difficult at the time,” he begins, almost like he’s remembering an alternative reality or a bad dream, before shaking off any opportunity to wallow. “But then, these experiences in life shape you,” he affirms. “It made me realise how important nutrition is, especially. I think it 100% helped me.”  

Within a couple of years of the potentially life-altering and career-ending incident, he’d overcome the adversity and signed for Scottish giants, Celtic, a move he defines as the most substantial and pressurised of his career. A massive, globally renowned club, it was the perfect dress rehearsal for what would follow. “It was an outstanding move to prepare for what would be coming next. But at the time I wasn't thinking that far ahead at all. Suddenly, I was playing in the Champions League in a group with Ajax, Barcelona and AC Milan, winning the Scottish Premiership two times and the Scottish League Cup. These are things that I’d not experienced before: the pressure, the responsibility. So it was all preparing me for eventually going to the Premier League.”

A breakthrough period on the English south coast at Southampton came next. It was during this two-and-a-half-year period that Van Dijk metamorphosed from promising talent to potential world-class footballer. It didn’t take long for Liverpool to swoop in. He’s been there ever since, and considers it a “perfect part” of his life. “You have to fight your heart out, you have to give it everything,” he says on the Liverpudlian way. “And you have to be humble. Over all those years, what stands by me and will forever stand by me is how kind people are, how open and honest. I'm proud of being an adopted Scouser.”

When he signed for the club in January 2018, Van Dijk became the most expensive defender of all time. A weight of expectation dangled in front of him, lightened by having the right people around him. “There was obviously a lot of talk about the price tag. But I just felt the confidence from the manager so much.” He doesn’t like to define anyone as the single most important person in his career – because “I don’t like to put someone higher than anyone else” – but Klopp is right up there. “From the very first meeting that I had with him, it was incredible,” he says of the German, undoubtedly one of football's most likeable figures. “He was so straightforward. I had such a good relationship with him from day one until the day he left. He means a lot to me, and I'm still in touch with him.” 

His days playing under Klopp included some of the most successful years in Liverpool’s recent history, winning both the Premier League and the Champions League. But all good things must end, and the manager left Liverpool at the close of the 2023/24 season, replaced by Slot. Pundits expected a drop-off, but the team surprised all and Van Dijk won a second Premier League title. Then, after the highs of that boom, an earth-shattering event occurred.

“It is difficult, and it will always stay difficult,” he says quietly on the passing of Diogo Jota, a close friend and teammate who died in a car accident in the summer of 2025. They played together for 130 games across five years. It was a situation that tore right through the core of the football community, with Van Dijk at the crux of the heartbreak at Liverpool. As ever, though, even in the darkest of times, the Dutchman rose above the shock and sorrow, endeavouring to lead his team and his city forward, as a beacon of support and solidarity, speaking with his players individually to see how he could help with their own unique grief. “Our full and only focus was – and will always remain – with Rute, their children and all of Diogo’s family. When we had to return to the club, you couldn’t hide the fact that something horrible happened to one of us,” he says. “We are a brotherhood. Obviously, for me as a captain, you try to oversee that. You try to be involved in as much as you can be. You want to make sure that his legacy will never be forgotten. Everyone deals with it in their own way. When we have those conversations with each other, it’s important to open up, to listen. At the end of the day, we’re all together in this. It definitely brought us closer. We have an amazing statue for him [outside Anfield Stadium]. The club has been amazing for his family, but I didn't expect anything less from Liverpool.”

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His position in the healing of his club and city is one of many examples of Van Dijk’s altruism. Another being his latest philanthropic endeavour, the Virgil’s Legacy Trophy. Taking place annually – recently staging its second event – the competition sees the biggest teams from Europe bring their youth players to the ground of his childhood team, Willem II, to empower, according to its website, “the next generation of football icons by providing an elite professional stage right where Virgil’s own journey began.”

The initiative is about setting up the kids for the highs and lows that come with being a professional in the game. “In three or four years’ time, kids from that tournament could be playing for Barcelona,” Van Dijk says. “They can say they played at Virgil’s tournament. That was the start of me really believing that I could make something. I’m really proud to be doing it. Also giving them the experience of what it takes to be playing at a high level. They’ll have post-match interviews, recovery stations where they can see what it takes to recover. Small things that can prepare you for what’s coming when you are a little bit older and play at a high level.”

Setting standards is, for Van Dijk, a habit that travels beyond the pitch. While his elegance and poise in the game have been studied since his breakout, so too has the way it shows up in his wardrobe. He describes his style with the nonchalance it’s renowned for: “minimalist, classy, just expressing myself in a good way.” He’s got the air of someone who makes good olfactory choices, too. On his grooming regimen broadly: “I think… always take a shower – it’s a good start,” he quips. “Use nice body creams and scrubs now and then. Soft Services soap – I’ve been using that quite a lot, and it’s really good. I’ve been a little bit obsessed with it, to be fair, so I’ve got one at the training ground and one at home. And then nice perfume. You always have to make sure you smell nice. And obviously, for me personally, I need to be on top of my hair.” 

He doesn’t seem one to circle his status as a cult style icon often in conversation, however. He looks inclined to laugh it off when I bring it up. Whether he’s celebrated for his appearance or the strength of his tackles, Van Dijk doesn’t romanticise himself or his position. He remains grounded by a family who “keeps things in perspective”, including when fortunes aren’t in his favour. His head isn’t in the clouds – it’s on the pitch, in the dressing room, in his community. He’s a male role model, polite and courteous, and holds an untainted reputation across the footballing landscape, even among his competitors. He is more driven than ever to play and perform, week in, week out, and bring his domestic and international team further triumphs. “We have four trophies that we compete for, and I want to be successful in all of them,” he says of the season ahead. “I know it's going to be difficult, but that’s my aim. I will give everything, and I will do everything in my power to try and realise that.”

There are innumerable superlatives to describe Virgil van Dijk. But the thing that strikes me most about him is his confidence. It’s ceaseless, unbreakable, complete. Never arrogant, and yet so uncompromising. 

“As a player, you have to accept that for those 90 minutes, not everything goes well,” he says before we part ways. “But you have the time to repair it. You have the time to react to it. It’s easier for me now to say after all these years, but experience is a big thing. Going through difficult moments will always make you stronger. It sounds very cliché, but it is like that. In a game, I can make a misplaced pass. But then what am I going to do? Am I going to think about that pass for the whole game, or am I going to switch on and make sure the next one is going to be good? That’s the only way to success – consistency.”