For the first time in his life, Virgil van Dijk was scared. Really scared. The 6ft 4in tower of pure muscle lay in a hospital bed, in extreme, near-constant pain, with tubes dangling out of his body.
Van Dijk, Groningen’s promising 20-year-old centre-back, had felt unwell for a week, but had brushed off his illness as simply a bad fever. So had another hospital. In actual fact, on April Fool’s Day 2012, his appendix had ruptured and he was suffering from both peritonitis and a kidney infection. He needed immediate, life-saving surgery.
“I remember everything about it,” he says, nearly seven years later, from the plush confines of Liverpool’s training ground. Van Dijk pauses and looks FourFourTwo straight in the eye to make sure we’re listening. “I’m not going to…
