Last Saturday, Arsenal’s Nicolas Pepe became the first player to successfully dribble past Virgil van Dijk in the Dutch defender’s past 50 Premier League appearances for Liverpool.
Such has been the impact of Van Dijk, named Uefa Men’s Player of the Year for 2018-19, since he came to Anfield from Southampton in January 2018 for a then world record fee for a defender of £75 million.
Van Dijk is the first defender to win the award, beating Barcelona’s Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo of Juventus who have received the honour, established in 2010, five-times between them.
Van Dijk, in fact, scored over three times the number of points that Ronaldo did — the defender had 305 to CR7’s 74 with Messi getting 207.
The 28-year-old Dutch centre-back was an integral part of the Liverpool side that won the Champions League last season and pushed eventual Premier League champions Manchester City all the way.
Van Dijk began his career in his homeland with Groningen and moved to Scottish club Celtic before heading to the Premier League.
“It’s been a long road but that’s part of my journey, it’s part of who I am. I needed it like this, I’m not a player who was 18 years old and had that rise straight away. I had to work hard for every step of the way — that’s part of me and I’m very happy about that,” the Dutchman said.
In an earlier interview, Van Dijk had picked former Dutch international Jaap Stam as his favourite defender — a bold choice given that Stam spent four seasons at Liverpool’s bitter rivals Manchester United. In that time, Stam won the treble in 1999 as well as two more league titles.
“He’s (Stam) Dutch and he was a fantastic defender for United and the national team,” Van Dijk had said.
He had also picked former Netherlands, Ajax and Barcelona star Ronald Koeman and Italy legend Paolo Maldini in his list of great defenders.
The award to Van Dijk is in many ways an acknowledgement of the role defenders play in a team’s success. None of the three picked by Van Dijk have won the Player of the Year award or its earlier avatar of UEFA Club Footballer of the Year, though Stam won the Best Defender award twice (1998-99 and 1999-2000 playing for Manchester United) and Maldini once, in 2006-07 for AC Milan.
Van Dijk also won the Best Defender award on Thursday; the Reds had another reason to rejoice with Brazil international Allison winning the honour for Best Goalkeeper.
Just how well Van Dijk has defended is borne out by these numbers.
A report on bbc.com, with the help of sports analysts Opta, says that Van Dijk made a total of 59 appearances for club and country last season, during which he won over 70 per cent of his duels and aerial battles, underlining his importance at the heart of the defence. He also scored nine goals and provided four assists.
Liverpool conceded fewer goals (22) than any other Premier League side last season — Van Dijk won 76.3 per cent of his duels in the league.
Of the 293 defenders involved in 200 or more duels in 2018-19 in Europe’s top five leagues, no player won a higher percentage than Van Dijk. Lyon’s Marcelo was in second spot with 72.9 per cent of wins in duels, followed by Harry Maguire (for Leicester City) with 72.7 per cent.
