Virgil van Dijk was involved in a tetchy exchange with one reporter during a press conference prior to Netherlands’ UEFA Nations League opener against Germany.
The Liverpool captain – who turned 35 in July – is continuing to play with his country after their disappointing round-of-32 exit at the World Cup and has retained the armband for Xavi’s reign as Oranje boss.
The veteran defender has often been a lightning rod for criticism in his homeland, with Dutch reporter Valentijn Driessen infamously remarking in June that the centre-back and then-national team coach Ronald Koeman had ‘betrayed everything our national team stands for’.
Van Dijk rebukes reporter over ‘nonsense’ claims
Van Dijk came face to face with the journalist in the press conference ahead of Netherlands v Germany, and the latter’s question about what went wrong at the World Cup triggered the Reds skipper.
The defender retored (via Voetbal Primeur, translated from Dutch): “Well, it’s easy to say in hindsight: ‘We should have done this differently’ or ‘We should have done that differently’.
“One of your colleagues also said, of course, that it was my idea to switch to playing with a back five. That is utter nonsense. The fact is we simply failed at the World Cup; those are the hard facts.”
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“We didn’t play a good World Cup. It’s not about me. You perform together; you’re a team. Your claim that I destroyed Dutch football after the World Cup – that sort of thing is completely baseless…”
Van Dijk has the chance to answer his critics on the pitch for Netherlands
As captain of his country, Van Dijk is naturally going to be in the spotlight of an expectant nation’s media, and it’s difficult to deny that Netherlands underperformed at the World Cup.
However, when the Liverpool captain feels that he’s being singled out for personal rather than constructive criticism and that a ‘baseless’ agenda is being presented, it’s understandable that he’d want to set the record straight.
To his credit, his performances for his club in the first month of the season have been impressive, with he and centre-back partner Jeremy Jacquet playing a major role in the Reds keeping three successive clean sheets in the Premier League for the first time in two years.
If Van Dijk can carry over that standard of performance into the national team over the next fortnight, starting with Thursday night’s high-profile fixture against Jurgen Klopp’s Germany, that’d be the perfect response to what he feels is excessive criticism from some corners of Dutch media.
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