Virgil van Dijk has vowed he is putting his full focus into turning around Liverpool 's season despite the recent memory of suffering an injury that led to heartbreak on the international stage.
Van Dijk has hit by a significant leg injury at the start of the 2020/2021 season that ruled him out of Euro 2020. The centre-back is captain of the Netherlands national team and in his absence they were surprisingly dumped out by the Czech Republic in the Last 16.
The Liverpool star will hope that he is able to turn out for Oranje this winter when they travel to Qatar for the World Cup. He may be forgiven for focusing at least part of his mind on avoiding suffering a similar injury to when he ruptured his ACL at Goodison Park in October 2020.
But Van Dijk has now insisted that he is ignoring those thoughts, with Liverpool having endured a mixed start to their season. While the Dutchman has obviously set his sights on appearing at the World Cup, he has maintained that his focus is on the Reds.
"I can only speak for myself and I wouldn't worry about me. I want to go but to be ready, in my opinion, is not to focus on hopefully not getting injured, it is just keep playing, get fit, stay fit and get in a good moment," he said.
“Obviously I am very excited to lead the boys out there and do as good as we can but we are not in the situation because of that. I would understand because of the start we had everyone is looking for 'Why?'.
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"Because the difference is too big but I can assure you that is definitely not one of the reasons. You focus on the game at the time and that's definitely what we're doing. If you think about this I think you are going to have issues in my opinion."
Liverpool's final game before the international break was a 2-1 win over Ajax in the Champions League. And Van Dijk is hoping that Jurgen Klopp's side can use that result to kickstart their season.
"We had a good step and hopefully we can carry that on after the internationals. It was a big one for us, now I and certain players have internationals and other players will train and play friendlies in order to stay fit and get fit and we will get players back after the internationals," he added.
"It is just game-by-game. And that includes international football. For me it is two games against Poland and Belgium and then it is Brighton, so that will be the focus. I’m not focusing on what is happening in November."
Van Dijk will line up for the Netherlands as they face Poland and Belgium in their final games before the World Cup. Louis van Gaal's side have been drawn in Group A alongside Senegal, Ecuador and Qatar.
