Jurgen Klopp has reassured Jordan Henderson that he’ll keep Liverpool’s official captaincy, but stated that he feels the team needs more than one ‘leader,’ and in Virgil van Dijk, we have another.
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The brilliant Dutch centre-back skippered his country during the international break and as a result, there have been calls from groups of Liverpool fans for Klopp to give him our armband, too.
Journalists asked our manager today if this was under consideration – and the German gave a very interesting answer.
“Hendo is doing an incredible job here,” Klopp told the Independent. “If you ask me ‘am I thinking about giving the armband to someone else?’ then no.
“Captaincy feels like a joy in the first moment and then from that moment on it’s only work.
“I don’t think if I asked in the dressing room ‘who wants to be captain next year?’ that 28 arms would go up.
“What we need at Liverpool are these kind of players who are leaders. Hendo and Virgil are leaders and that’s cool.
“But I am not half as much interested in the captaincy role than you all are.
“I’ve learned a lot in the last few days about the captaincy role in cricket, but I don’t really know what they are talking about!
“Do you need more than one player who feels responsible for the whole group? Yes of course. We have them and Virgil is one of them.
“It’s a job to do and it’s not better paid, you don’t get extra money for doing it. There are a lot more duties and not a lot more rights to be honest.”
It’s very obvious when watching Liverpool that van Dijk marshals our defence and is a leader on the field, so whether he dons the armband or not is largely irrelevant.
Jamie Carragher did the same for years and years without the captaincy due to the quieter but more inspirational Steven Gerrard in front of him.
But the stick Hendo gets, often from his own fans, is a joke.
When you’re at Anfield, you’ll rarely hear him slaughtered, but internet ‘supporters’ like to ridicule him regardless of performance.
Some of the reaction to his performance against Holland for England was insane. He was probably Man of the Match and still was the ‘go-to-guy’ for many who don’t know how to watch football to pounce on.
Never mind.
If Klopp trusts him and describes him as incredible (just as Brendan Rodgers and Kenny Dalglish before him did), maybe he’s on to something?