Virgil van Dijk sustained a serious knee injury in October 2020 and didn’t play again until August 2021, however there really hasn’t been much of an example of another break from the side since then.
As reported by Mark Carey from The Athletic, via Football Benchmark analysis: with 7,597 minutes recorded between July 2021 to October 2022, no player who participated in the World Cup played more football than our No.4.
Seeing as one of these months occurred whilst the Dutchman was still out injured, it shows just how much we rely on our centre-half and how quickly he recovered from his operation.
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The 31-year-old has recently had another, thankfully much shorter, period on the sidelines 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 highly but some may say that he needs to be handed some time off the pitch every now and then.
Whether we see more muscle injuries coming for the captain of his nation in the latter stages of his career because of these minutes played, time will tell but we should all at least applaud his phenomenal recovery and availability for the Reds.
You can view the van Dijk statistic via @MarkCarey93 on Twitter:
"What caught up is that I played too many games at a time. When it's game day I want to play and I'll do everything possible to play, but I could have also thought before the World Cup, 'let's rest a little bit in order to be ready.'"@VirgilvDijk is not wrong… pic.twitter.com/vBzkFrtHor
— Mark Carey (@MarkCarey93) March 2, 2023
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