No player has had a bigger impact on their club or national side than Virgil Van Dijk has had on Liverpool since he joined on 1 January 2018. For this reason he’s my Player of 2018.
When Van Dijk announced in late December 2017 that he was making the move to Liverpool, nobody was surprised. In the previous summer transfer window Liverpool had been trying to sign him to no avail. Southampton had accused them of ‘tapping him up’ so they subsequently abandoned their pursuit of the player in that window.
However Liverpool did not give up that easy.