Virgil van Dijk would not thank me for telling the story - in fact, I expect he might be a touch annoyed. Well, as annoyed as Van Dijk can get.
But behind the scenes at Anfield on a late Sunday afternoon, a scene unfolded that gave a small and simple snapshot of why Liverpool Football Club has one of its finest-ever leaders. As has become customary, Van Dijk had stopped to speak to a knot of newspaper journalists in the wake of Liverpool’s latest win, a narrow victory over West Ham United that had been clinched by the captain himself.
As good as confirming he was about to sign a new two-year contract, he was talking about his love of the club when a group of people shaped to move past the assembled journalists and Van Dijk. Spotting them, Van Dijk politely paused our conversation and went over to put his arm around a man in a wheelchair.
The man was Sean Cox, the Liverpool fan from Ireland who suffered serious brain damage in an unprovoked assault outside Anfield before the first leg of a Champions League semi-final against Roma nearly seven years ago. Sean was accompanied by his wife Martina and family members, and was a special guest at Anfield as part of his birthday celebrations.
“Oh Sean, it has been a long time my friend,” smiled Van Dijk. “I’ll come and have a proper chat in a minute. I’ll come and see you guys shortly.”
During his arduous recovery from his terrible injuries, the support of Liverpool has meant a lot to Sean’s family and Van Dijk is emblematic of that support. Quite rightly, Van Dijk would be scornful of attaching any significance whatsoever to the scenario that unfolded just down the corridor from the Anfield dressing-rooms but it was a nice coincidence that it came in the middle of a discussion in which the Liverpool captain was talking about his pride in representing the club on AND off the pitch.
In an earlier interview, he had gently chided a reporter who suggested Van Dijk and his imminent contract agreement would be the story of the upcoming days. No, said Van Dijk, who had just captained Liverpool for the one hundredth time. The most important thing over the coming days would be the remembrance of the 97 Hillsborough victims.
No-one is more aware of a football club’s wider importance to the community than Van Dijk is. The importance of captaincy is an intriguing subject. Some think it can be overstated and that any great team needs leaders all over the pitch. Which, of course, is true.
But great teams normally have great captains and those great captains often have different attributes. Roy Keane was combustible but a great captain, in his early days Tony Adams had some issues away from the field but became a great captain. Johan Cruyff’s brilliance with the ball was one of the main reasons he was a great captain of Ajax.
Van Dijk leads with calm authority, demanding of team-mates without belittling them. And, of course, he leads by example.
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His record at Anfield is remarkable. One hundred and 15 games, 94 wins, 18 draws, three defeats, 53 clean sheets, 13 goals. Since making his Liverpool debut, he has been central to 97 clean sheets, the most from any defender in that time.
And with 24 to his name, no defender has scored as many goals as Van Dijk has scored in that time. If Mohamed Salah had not been setting and chasing more records this season, Van Dijk would have been a fitting winner of end-of-season individual awards.
But while he has won a few of those - he was the 2018-19 PFA Player of the Year - there has never been a hint of any sort of burning need for personal acclaim. He gets the team ethic, he gets the club ethic. Liverpool has a pantheon of great captains - from Ron Yeats to Steven Gerrard - and Van Dijk can take his place amongst them.
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