Player of the Year van Dijk breaks the mold

Liverpool star Virgil van Dijk broke the mold on Sunday when he walked away with the PFA Players’ Player of the Year award.

In the same way that football belongs to the quarterback and baseball to the hitter, soccer is undoubtedly a forward’s game. When you strip it down, at the heart of the sport lies the primary objective to outscore your opponent and it simply follows that the players who score the most goals receive the most acclaim.

In the Premier League, the likes of Sergio Aguero, Harry Kane and Mohamed Salah captivate global audiences on a weekly basis and they’re but a few of the attacking superstars that light up England’s shores. It’s telling, then, in a league which boasts the best collection of forwards on the planet, that a defender has stood head and shoulders above his peers this season.

Less than a decade ago, Virgil van Dijk was juggling a job as a dishwasher with academy football at Willem II. On Sunday, with the PFA Players’ Player of the Year award in hand, the Liverpool star walked off the stage in London as the best player in the Premier League.

His journey from dishwasher to defensive juggernaut has been remarkable. During his teens, van Dijk was regarded as being too small and limited to make it as a center-back at Willem II. These physical shortcomings, which preceded a late growth spurt, saw him cast out by the Dutch club and overlooked by many of the Eredivisie’s powers that be.

He eventually broke through at Groningen but not before having to overcome injuries, illness and rejection to forge out a career as a professional soccer player.

Fast-forward to the present day, via spells with Celtic and Southampton, and van Dijk stands at an imposing 6-foot-4 in the heart of Liverpool’s defense. Where he previously had to hone his ball-playing skills to compensate for his physical deficiencies, the most expensive defender in the world has combined the two facets of his game over the last few years and now presents as one of the most complete players in world soccer.

It’s no surprise  that the Dutchman has bucked the trend to become the first defender in more than a decade to win the Player of the Year award. In the last year-and-a-half since joining Liverpool, he has elevated his game to a level not seen at Anfield since the club’s heyday in the ’80s, and perhaps unheard of even then. His impact was immediate, scoring on his debut against Everton, and delivering a string of colossal performances to help the club reach last season’s Champions League final.

The Dutchman has grown from strength-to-strength since and has been an ever-present for the club in the league during which Liverpool have lost only once and conceded a league-low 20 goals. After 36 matches, he is yet to be dribbled past by an opposition player, boasts the best percentage of aerial battles won by any player in the Premier League and ranks among the best for clearances, passes and touches. He’s also contributed at the other end of the pitch with three goals to his name.

Those figures alone would have been enough to put van Dijk in contention for the Player of the Season award but they don’t do justice to his influence and the magnitude of his performances this season. It’s in the immeasurables that he truly rises above the rest. The 27-year old has brought a sense of calmness to Liverpool’s defensive line that has near-singlehandedly transformed a previously porous back-four into arguably the best defensive unit in Europe.

Combining pace, power and poise, he has dominated every opponent he has come up against this season, whether it be in the air, in the tackle or in a foot race. And he has made it look easy. Soccer might still be a forward’s game, but van Dijk is changing the way its played.