Liverpool take on Bayern Munich in the first leg of their Champions League round of 16 tie without their best defender, Virgil van Dijk.
In the 32 games Virgil van Dijk has played for Liverpool this season, they’ve lost once. In the two games he hasn’t, they’ve lost twice.
There were mitigating circumstances of course — the two losses without van Dijk came in the Carabao and FA Cups, when the Dutchman was only one of many regular starters left out of the side — but even if it doesn’t tell the whole story, those numbers do feel like a mostly accurate reflection of the center-back’s importance to this team. He is their rock. Without him, well, we’re about to find out.
On Tuesday, Liverpool host Bayern Munich, five-time defending Bundesliga champions who haven’t failed to reach at least the quarterfinals in Europe since 2011, in the first leg of the Champions League round of 16. Van Dijk is suspended.
This is, needless to say, not ideal. And it is even less ideal because of Liverpool’s other defensive problems, or problem: Joel Matip is currently their only fit senior center-back. Joe Gomez is getting surgery on a broken ankle, and while Dejan Lovren could yet recover from injury in time, if he does it will be his first game since that FA Cup loss, to Wolves on Jan. 7, when he was forced off after only six minutes with a hamstring problem. He would be tasked with marking Robert Lewandowski, on track to score 40 goals this season for the fourth year in a row.
All of which means Matip is likely to be partnered by Fabinho, a midfielder, who has been dealing with some fitness problems of his own over the past week. There’s a case to be made — maybe not a good one, but a case — that Fabinho is a better center-back than Lovren, better positionally, more assured in possession. But like Matip, he prefers to defend space, to pick his moments, to leave the banging and the bumping and the jostling for position to others. Against a player like Lewandowski, lacking an aggressive center-back (like Lovren) whose first instinct is to attack the ball is not ideal. Even so, Matip and Fabinho are both experienced, intelligent players; between the two of them, they’ll figure something out.
Possibly the bigger question is how the team, Anfield in general, copes mentally and emotionally without van Dijk. The Reds’ defensive transformation this season has been almost miraculous. And while a more conservative tactical approach, the signing of Alisson and the improvement of Trent Alexander-Arnold, Andy Robertson and (pre-injury) Joe Gomez have all played a role, van Dijk is the leader, the emotional core, the one player opposing teams fear.
He is at this point, like all great center-backs, presence as much as player. And what a presence, supremely unruffled, distantly insulting: He is enormous, and also the smoothest, most effortless player on the pitch; most players don’t get to be both. Defending is necessarily reactive — all defending is a response to some attacking — but van Dijk’s defending seems, instead, inevitable, as if all along the forward’s plan was to be tackled, out-jumped, beaten for pace.
Maybe this is too much. Van Dijk has after all been at this level for only a season and a half. But whether or not he deserves to be mentioned among the greats of his position is a separate issue to the issue at hand, which is that the impact — tactically, psychologically — he has had on this Liverpool team is real, tangible, will be felt in his absence like a missing limb. All it will take is a mis-step by Matip or Fabinho or whoever, a good touch or turn or shot by Lewandowski, and what will Anfield think of, how could Anfield not think of, the player they are not?
But let’s give some credit, too, to Jurgen Klopp, who is nothing if not the consummate underdog. Teams are not players, and he will not be cowed in the absence of his best defender, might even view at as an opportunity. At home, with Fabinho — probably Liverpool’s only midfielder more suited to a slower, deliberate passing game than a frantic, transition-heavy, pressing one — likely to be playing at center-back, it seems a fair bet Klopp will ask his team to press high up the pitch, a tactic which has mostly been shelved in the league this season, but that helped the Reds to the final of this competition last May.
If that is the approach, the front three takes care of itself and the main selection question comes in midfield. Klopp has two main choices, either Georginio Wijnaldum-Jordan Henderson-James Milner or Georginio Wijnaldum-Jordan Henderson-Naby Keita. (Milner-Wijnaldum-Keita is also an option, but Henderson, as captain, tends to get the nod on such occasions). Klopp values Milner’s experience, and has often favored him in these sorts of games, but Keita, who has over the past couple of weeks finally started to show flashes of his quality, has a much higher ceiling.
Regardless of who Klopp picks, the approach will be the same: To overwhelm Bayern, to force them into retreat, to score (and ideally score and score), to make up for van Dijk’s absence the only way he knows how, convincing everyone it never mattered in the first place.