Virgil van Dijk will walk onto the pitch against Japan this week as the Netherlands’ most indispensable player. He’ll also be doing it on legs that have logged more minutes this season than almost any other footballer on the planet.
The numbers are staggering. Van Dijk has racked up 4,941 minutes for Liverpool this campaign, plus 810 more for his country. If he plays the full group stage, he’ll blow past 6,000 minutes before turning 35 in the quarterfinal round. That workload would make any center-back a concern — but for a veteran defender carrying an entire national team’s hopes, the stakes feel heavier every match.
A Last Dance on the World Stage
This is almost certainly Van Dijk’s final World Cup. The Netherlands captain was 30 before he ever played in one, missing out in 2014 when then-manager Louis van Gaal infamously left him off the squad. “He often let forwards walk in behind him,” Van Gaal explained years later. “He did not defend forward.” Seven years later, Van Gaal made Van Dijk his captain for Qatar 2022.
That tournament ended in heartbreak — a penalty shootout loss to Argentina where Van Dijk saw his own spot kick saved by Emi Martinez. It was his only touch in the match that mattered, and it still lingers. Ronald Koeman, his current manager, knows the feeling. He lost his last World Cup game 32 years ago in the United States. History doesn’t always repeat, but for Dutch defenders at big tournaments, the pattern is hard to shake.
The Weight of a Team
Van Dijk has been stripped of his usual partners. At Liverpool, he relied on Andy Robertson and Ibrahima Konate; both are gone now, the Scot to injury and the Frenchman to a sudden transfer. Van Dijk wanted each to stay, according to reports. For the Netherlands, Jurrien Timber was expected to line up alongside him until injury ruled the Arsenal defender out of the tournament. Koeman has shuffled his back line repeatedly, but Van Dijk remains the anchor.
His club manager Arne Slot has publicly praised the veteran’s availability. “He’s always there,” Slot said, acknowledging how rare that is for a player with Van Dijk’s mileage. And with Frenkie de Jong orchestrating midfield and Wout Weghorst offering chaos up front, the Dutch still look like dark horses — but only if Van Dijk holds the line.
He faces a tricky test against Japan, who are dangerous on the counter. Then comes a reunion with Liverpool teammate Alexander Isak, whose struggles for form last season Van Dijk called “unacceptable.” That comment underscored how high the bar remains for those around him. Even as his own game has shown occasional cracks — a chest-barge red-card scare against Argentina in 2022, a season that felt mixed by his standards — he has never been more central to everything.
At his peak, Van Dijk was the kind of defender who could go an entire season without being dribbled past. He was never a front-foot, ball-chasing center-back. He read the game, organized the backline, and let attackers run into a wall. Slot admitted he was surprised by how good Van Dijk is on the ball after working with him. It’s the kind of quiet excellence that gets overlooked until it’s gone.
For the Netherlands, that moment is coming. But not yet. First comes Japan, then potentially Isak, then whatever knockout drama awaits. Van Dijk will turn 35 in the middle of it all — and he’ll probably still be on the pitch, playing every minute.
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