'World collapsed' - Virgil van Dijk opens up on dark…

'World collapsed' - Virgil van Dijk opens up on dark times after Liverpool injury

Virgil van Dijk has revealed just how badly he initially struggled after suffering an ACL injury in October 2020.

The Dutchman was forced off early on in the Merseyside derby at Goodison Park following a wild challenge from Everton goalkeeper Jordan Pickford. And although the Liverpool defender was able to walk off the pitch on his own, scans later revealed he had suffered an anterior cruciate ligament injury.

He would be sidelined until the following pre-season as a result, with the Reds enduring a difficult campaign without him as, one by one, they lost all their senior centre-backs to season-ending injuries. Meanwhile, he’d also miss out on the opportunity to captain the Netherlands at Euro 2020 where Amsterdam was one of the host cities.

And reliving what was going through his head following Pickford’s tackle when speaking with Gary Neville on ‘The Overlap’ , he admitted he could no longer walk when out of public sight at Goodison Park and that his ‘world collapsed’ when the severity of the injury was confirmed.

“You know as a football player, if you have done something with your knee, that’s the worst you can get as a football player,” he said. “When that moment happened and I was in the van on the way to the clinic to get a scan immediately, I was just praying and hoping there.

“I went down and I always feel when I go down, I have to get up. I have to feel, I get knocks all the time but I feel if I’m standing up, I feel that I’m fine.

“I stood up and I walked and I felt the instability immediately. When I’m walking around the pitch, so I had to go all the way to the corner of the stadium, ‘I’m thinking what can this be? Is this it?’

“As we are in the corner, I couldn’t walk anymore. I was limping. I did all these tests in the dressing room. There was a bit of a feeling that it was only going to be the MCL, so the inside. So I had a bit of hope that it could be positive, it could be okay.

“MCL done, three months and you’ll be fine. Euros are coming in the summer. I went for the scan and I went home. I was home alone at that time actually, my wife and kids were back home in Holland. They flew back the next morning just to be with me.

“I got a call from my physio and he said, ‘It’s bad news’. Then the world collapsed. It was very, very tough to deal with.”

However, despite the lengthy lay-off, Van Dijk revealed he turned his rehabilitation into a positive and described the two months he spent in Dubai with his family to continue his recovery as ‘one of the best times’ of his life.

“I had to wait a week to make sure it settled,” he said. “Then I went to London to get the surgery from Andy Williams. He was fantastic for me and my family.

“And then the rehab starts. The first three weeks were horrible. Pain, can’t sleep. And then after that I went to Dubai and we were there for like seven or eight weeks.

“I had one of the best times of my life with my family there. Having precious time with my family that I hadn’t had for years. It was lockdown here as well but there it was all open and just having a normal life. Celebrating Christmas there, celebrating New Year there.

“I saw the positive side of being together there and working each and every day, twice a day, hard, in order to be back as quickly as possible. But the beginning and the surgery was horrible.”

READ NEXT

Read news from 100’s of titles, curated specifically for you.

Already a member? Sign in here