Virgil van Dijk has claimed that all the teams in England would want to be in Liverpool’s position despite the Merseyside club losing the Champions League final against Real Madrid.
While Gareth Bale scored one of the greatest goals in Champions League history, there were a couple of howlers from Loris Karius that helped the defending champions keep their title.
We did get back in the game when Sadio Mane equalised after Karim Benzema gave Real the lead but that was the only positive from the game as Mohamed Salah had to be replaced in the 30th minute after injuring his shoulder.
Van Dijk, however, did not blame Karius or the team for the loss and instead stated that he was proud of what the team had done to reach the final in the first place.
While speaking to talkSPORT (h/t The Express) the former Southampton man said:
“Of course we should be proud of ourselves. All the teams in England want to be in our position right now.
“They act like they’re happy, but I think they should be jealous!
“We were here, unfortunately we lost, but I think we need to take this to next season and make sure we do even better than we did this year.”
Questions will inevitably be raised about the prospect of Karius continuing as the keeper next season as this is one position that has troubled us a lot during Klopp’s time at the club.
Simon Mignolet was replaced by the German as the first choice keeper but things really did not go our way in the final at all.
Van Dijk did speak about doing better next season and that can only be done if we have quality additions to the side as we need quality cover for our front three of Roberto Firmino, Salah and Mane.
Jurgen Klopp did a great job in taking us to the final and hopefully, we can go one better in the future and win the Champions League or some other trophy and break the duck while keeping our rivals jealous of our success.
