Virgil van Dijk: A Steady Force Amid Liverpool's Transition

Virgil van Dijk has seen enough of football to know what the end of a cycle looks like. This doesn’t feel like one.

He turned 35 last month. He is into the final year of the two-year extension he signed back in April 2025. On paper, those are the markers of a long goodbye. On the pitch and inside Liverpool’s dressing room, he remains the reference point, the fixed landmark in a defence being rebuilt around him for a third different manager.

Andoni Iraola has walked into a club where the centre-back department is almost unrecognisable. Giovanni Leoni is 19. Jeremy Jacquet is 21. Neither has played a minute of Premier League football. Joe Gomez is fighting his body again. Ronald Araujo is about to arrive as an emergency loan from Barcelona.

In the middle of all that change stands Van Dijk. Still captain. Still the one everyone looks at when the room needs calming.

The workload of a man who refuses to slow down

The last 12 months have pushed him to the edge.

No player across Europe’s top five leagues played more minutes than Van Dijk last season. Before the World Cup, he had already racked up 5,841 minutes. Then he went to Qatar, played every minute of the Netherlands’ run to the last-32, and finished the campaign on 6,141 minutes over 69 appearances for club and country. That’s an average of 89 minutes per game, for a 35-year-old centre-back with a major ACL injury in his past.

It was Van Dijk himself who said enough.

He asked for more rest this summer. Not a token breather, but a proper reset.

"I've had six, seven or eight days [training], so I was very keen to get minutes in my legs and glad I came out of it with no issues," he said after his first pre-season outing on Sunday, a 3-2 defeat to Monaco that mattered far more for fitness than for the scoreline.

The conversation with Iraola came early. The captain wanted his new coach to know exactly where he stood.

"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."

He made sure to stress there was no slight on Arne Slot, under whom Liverpool’s season ultimately ended in disappointment.

"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."

Skipping America to stay standing

What followed that long year was a very deliberate decision. Van Dijk asked to miss Liverpool’s pre-season tour of the United States. Not because he wanted to duck the work. Quite the opposite.

He chose the AXA Training Centre over long-haul flights and jet lag.

"I definitely asked for a good break because I felt like I needed it, not only physically but mentally as well," he explained.

"It was a very demanding year from before pre-season started last year until the day I got knocked out of the World Cup so I felt like I needed a good break and I had maybe three days more than Ryan (Gravenberch), Flo (Wirtz) and Alex (Isak).

"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.

"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 is what late-career elite looks like now: not bravado, but control. Knowing when to push and when to pull back, so that when the season starts and the games come every three days, the legs still answer every question.

‘Are you going to say I’m 35 and I can’t do it?’

The age question hangs over any player in their mid-30s. Van Dijk doesn’t 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?

"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.

"For me, I feel good. I am also a late bloomer so you know, maybe...it is what it is."

He still talks like a player at his peak, not one edging towards the exit.

"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."

A new era, with an old constant

Around him, Liverpool are shifting shape.

Ibrahima Konate has gone. Andy Robertson has gone. Mohamed Salah has gone. All of that just a year after a major overhaul of the squad. For Iraola, it is the start of something new. For Van Dijk, heading into his 10th season at Anfield, it feels like a bridge between eras.

"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.

"This year, we want to be successful, but there is a lot of work still to be done.

"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."

The recruitment team will work on fresh faces. Iraola will impose new ideas and new patterns. Young defenders will try to prove they belong at this level.

Through all of it, Liverpool’s defence still starts with the same name. The captain who has already lifted every major trophy for the club, now trying to anchor one more rebuild.

If this is the beginning of the end for Virgil van Dijk at Anfield, he is determined it will look nothing like a farewell tour.