Virgil van Dijk suffered a serious knee injury in October 2020 and didn’t play again until August 2021, however there really haven’t been many examples of another break since then.
As reported by The Athletic’s Mark Carey via Football Benchmark analysis: With 7,597 minutes logged between July 2021 and October 2022, no player who participated in the World Cup played more football than our No.4.
Seeing that one of these months happened while the Dutchman was still injured shows how much we trust our central midfielder and how quickly he recovered from his operation.
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The 31-year-old has recently had another, thankfully much shorter, spell sidelined with a hamstring problem, but these numbers show just how durable he has been for the Reds.
Jurgen Klopp clearly values the former Southampton defender incredibly, but some may say he needs some time off the pitch from time to time.
Whether we see more muscle injuries for his nation’s captain in the later stages of his career due to these minutes played, time will tell, but at the very least we should all applaud his phenomenal recovery and availability for the Reds.
You can see the van Dijk stats via @MarkCarey93 on Twitter:
“What struck me is that I played too many matches at once. When it’s match day, I want to play and I’ll do my best to play, but I might as well have thought before the World Cup, ‘let’s get some rest.’ . to be ready.'” @VirgilvDijk is not wrong… pic.twitter.com/vBzkFrtHor
— Mark Carey (@MarkCarey93) March 2, 2023
#Ep72 of The Empire of the Kop Podcast: Author talk with Marios Mantzos about Jurgen Klopp… and more!
