Virgil van Dijk discusses his famous penalty against Chelsea earlier this season and explains how he’s hungry for ‘rewards from a good season’

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Virgil van Dijk has discussed the sublime penalty he took in the League Cup final shootout victory over Chelsea in February and explained that all of his Liverpool teammates regularly practice taking penalties.

He did admit that he’s hoping for this weekend’s FA Cup final clash with Thomas Tuchel’s side to be won inside 90 minutes, but if needed, he will ‘step up’ again.

“It was a good penalty, I can’t deny it, but I’m definitely still practising on it because you have to,” van Dijk told Liverpool’s official website.

“You have to stay consistent. A penalty, you need a bit of luck, but you definitely practise it. We all as a group do it.

“Hopefully we can win the game and do it before penalties but if penalties are needed then players have to be ready to step up. In that case, obviously I had to step up.”

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The No. 4 has explained that Liverpool’s aim for the weekend is clear – when the full-time whistle goes at the national stadium on Saturday night, he wants to be celebrating with the travelling Kopites.

The FA Cup is the one trophy Jurgen Klopp is yet to win at the club and the Dutchman is craving the ‘incredible feeling’ of lifting silverware once again.

“It’s a fantastic occasion. It’s a final, the fans have their special day out at Wembley again,” added Van Dijk.

“For us as players, we want to win a cup, win this cup in particular. We’ll just go there and perform and hopefully be the better side, and on the winning side especially.

“The feeling that you get after you win something is an incredible feeling and you want to get that feeling after every season, or in the Carabao Cup a little bit earlier. You want rewards from a good season. So far this season we’re still in everything and we’ll see what it brings.”

There’s no two-ways about it, if we were to finish this season with just the League Cup to our name, it would be seriously disappointing.

Our chances of Premier League success are looking rather slim, but in the next two weeks, we could win the FA Cup and Champions League.

That would mark a superb season for the club – the next few weeks are going to be seriously exciting, but very nerve-racking.

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