Virgil van Dijk's first LFC year: A derby debut
Van Dijk's first game for the Reds came in an FA Cup tie with Everton at Anfield - and he couldn't have wished for a better start...
When I came to the club, I wanted to take the No.4 shirt. In my first Liverpool interview, I mentioned Sami Hyypia was a factor in that. The reason was, I knew Hyypia was a legend here and in Holland he is also well-known as well because he played for Willem II, where I played for my whole youth career. It was something a bit special to take his number.
More generally, No.4 is a number that I wore in Holland when I played there and it is a number you wear in my position. I am very, very happy to have that number – and hopefully for as long as possible.
Obviously the first time I got to wear it was in my debut, which just happened to be a Merseyside derby at Anfield!
The game was on a Friday, so it was a bit strange. The game before it was Burnley on the Monday – New Year’s Day and the day my transfer from Southampton to Liverpool became official – so I trained that morning with a couple of other players who weren’t in the squad, so we did a bit of a running session to get going.
On the Tuesday, I trained with the subs from Burnley at Melwood then later in the week, I began training with the rest of the boys. On the matchday, we trained in the morning and I wasn’t in the starting XI at first.
When we went out for the warm-up at Melwood at the start of the session, the boss told me I was going to be starting. To be honest, I went on auto-pilot because I was new and needed to know more about certain tactics and so on. We did what we call ‘11 versus 0’ to make sure we were going to do things in certain ways. I was just going with the flow, doing what everyone did, but I was really looking forward to the evening.
Afterwards, we went to the hotel and I prepared myself properly. I wasn’t really nervous, I was just very excited to go out there and show myself to the fans who had given me such a warm welcome.
When we arrived at the stadium, I knew the cameras would be on me because I was going to make my debut and the money Liverpool had paid for me, but I just went out of the tunnel for the warm-up and the fans gave me an ovation. I was just getting even more excited to start the game.
It was such an intense game – in fact, in the end I had a bit of cramp and I never get cramp!
To score the winner in such a big game is obviously something I will never forget – and I think the fans won’t forget it either. To score in a game like that, on my debut, in front of the Kop… that’s something very special.
To be honest, going into the game I wasn’t even thinking about it, but friends and family who I spoke to said ‘You can make your debut against Everton – what if you score in that game?’ I was like, ‘It’s not going to happen’… obviously then I did score and it was just something crazy. We couldn’t continue in the FA Cup last season, but that evening is something that I will always remember. A better start I don’t think you can get.
It was a special evening, a very special and proud evening for me and my family.