Virgil van Dijk: The Pillar of Liverpool's Defensive Rebuild
Virgil van Dijk has spent most of his Liverpool career looking like the calm eye of a storm. Now, as the club tears down and rebuilds its defence around him, he has never been more central to the whole operation.
The captain turned 35 last month. He is into the final year of the two-year extension he signed in April 2025. On paper, that usually signals the start of a long goodbye at a club like Liverpool.
On the pitch and inside the dressing room, it feels nothing like that.
The last pillar standing
Liverpool’s centre-back department is almost unrecognisable. Giovanni Leoni is 19. Jeremy Jacquet is 21. Neither has kicked a Premier League ball for the club. Joe Gomez is battling injuries again. Ronald Araujo is waiting to be confirmed as an emergency loan from Barcelona.
In the middle of that uncertainty stands Van Dijk. Same armband. Same authority. New manager.
Andoni Iraola is the third Liverpool head coach Van Dijk has played under at Anfield. The Dutchman is still the reference point, the one constant in a defence being reimagined on the fly.
Even in his mid-30s, he remains an elite defender and a dominant voice behind the scenes. At a time when the club is reshaping its core, he is the one player Liverpool simply cannot afford to mismanage.
A brutal year on the body
No player in Europe’s top five leagues played more minutes than Van Dijk last season. Nobody.
By the time he joined up with the Netherlands for the World Cup, he had already racked up 5,841 minutes. Then he played every minute of Oranje’s run to the last-32, pushing his total to 6,141 minutes across 69 appearances for club and country.
That works out at 89 minutes per game. For a 35-year-old centre-back with a major ACL injury in his past, it is a staggering workload.
It took its toll. Van Dijk knew it.
He asked Liverpool for something he rarely takes: a proper break.
"I definitely asked for a good break because I felt like I needed it, not only physically but mentally as well," he said after his first pre-season outing on Sunday, a 3-2 defeat to Monaco.
"It was a very demanding year from before pre-season started last year until the day I got knocked out of the World Cup."
He ended up with a three-week post-tournament holiday, slightly longer than team-mates Ryan Gravenberch, Florian Wirtz and Alexander Isak.
Crucially, he also asked for something else: to skip the club’s pre-season tour of the United States.
Skipping the glamour for the grind
While the rest of the squad flew across the Atlantic, Van Dijk stayed at the AXA Training Centre. No long-haul flights. No commercial appearances. No jet lag.
"For me it was key I didn't want to go to America because I didn't want to get jet lag and after come back from that as well," he explained.
"And I felt like having a couple of extra days at the AXA, doing the testing before the team was there and getting ready for when the team was back to immediately crack on, I felt that was for me personally the best way."
This was not a veteran easing off. It was a veteran doubling down.
He had just "six, seven or eight days" of training behind him before that Monaco game, but he wanted minutes. He wanted to feel the strain again.
"I was very keen to get minutes in my legs and glad I came out of it with no issues," he said.
A new manager, the same responsibility
If the schedule has been relentless, the changes around him have been just as intense.
Jurgen Klopp is gone. Arne Slot came and went after one bruising, disappointing season. Iraola is now tasked with steering a squad that has lost Ibrahima Konate, Andy Robertson and Mohamed Salah in the space of a year, on top of last summer’s overhaul.
For Van Dijk, it is unmistakably a new era.
"It definitely feels like a bit of a transition, for sure," he admitted. "It is down to everyone associated with Liverpool to make sure we are building something that will be successful for years to come."
He is not treating it as a holding pattern. He is treating it as a fresh challenge.
On Iraola, he is clear: the hierarchy has changed, his duty has not.
"It has been absolutely fine [working with Iraola], we had a great conversation in the first week when it got announced and the main thing for him to know is that I am here for him regardless.
"Anything he needs, wants to know, wants me to do for the team or whatever I am here for him and hopefully we will be successful this season and that's what we want."
There is respect too for what came before.
"Nothing to take away from Arne and his staff, we had an amazing time together, obviously last year a disappointment. This year we have a new manager who has new ways of preparation."
"So we have to adapt to a new staff, different training methods but I liked working under Arne and I am sure I will like working under the new manager."
Fighting time, not fearing it
The question that follows any 35-year-old defender is obvious: how long can this last?
Van Dijk does not dodge it. He challenges it.
"Yes [I'm ready to go again]," he said. "Are you going to say I'm 35 years old and I can't do it?"
He knows the margins are finer now. Recovery takes more work. Mistakes are punished more quickly in a team in transition.
"At the end of the day, you have to look after yourself. You have to be, I wouldn't say lucky, but you have to do everything in your power.
"That is the bare minimum for me because I feel the responsibility to be ready for each and every game. We play every three days. Between games, at home, at the training ground, you have to do everything in your power to be ready to play again."
He calls himself a "late bloomer". He leans into it.
"For me, I feel good. I am also a late bloomer so you know, maybe...it is what it is.
"I feel fine and I want to make all the fans proud all over the world that support us wherever we go, and that is by winning games and by showing what it means to wear the shirt every time, and that is for me the bare minimum anyway, so we keep going."
Holding the line in a new Liverpool
Strip away the sentiment and the picture is stark. Liverpool are heading into a season fighting on four fronts: Premier League, Champions League, FA Cup and League Cup. Their captain is 35, coming off the heaviest season of his career, and is still expected to anchor a remodelled back line.
"It is down to everyone associated with Liverpool to make sure we are building something that will be successful for years to come," Van Dijk said. "This year, we want to be successful, but there is a lot of work still to be done."
He knows what that demands.
"We all know how difficult it is to be playing in the Premier League, the League Cup, the FA Cup, and the Champions League, so we need everyone at their best.
"We need to be consistent and win more games. Let's see what the next couple of weeks are going to bring [in the transfer window]. Any quality we can add to the team will definitely be welcome so let's see."
Liverpool’s recruitment team will work to ease the load. Iraola will adjust his structure. Young defenders will be blooded, mistakes and all.
Through it all, one truth remains: as this new Liverpool takes shape, the man holding the line is the same one who has done it for the last decade.
Virgil van Dijk is not just surviving this transition. He is being asked to define it.
