Virgil van Dijk has withdrawn from the Netherlands squad for their November camp because of an injury that has reportedly been troubling him for close to a month.<\/p>\n
The update was understated, with the defender simply ruled out as \u201cnot fit enough\u201d to take part. For Liverpool, it is another reminder of how heavily they have leaned on their captain this season.<\/p>\n
Van Dijk\u2019s place in international football had not been entirely secure either. The 35-year-old was persuaded by incoming head coach Xavi Hern\u00e1ndez to keep the armband, and he brought up a century of caps against Serbia last month.<\/p>\n
At club level, the reliance has been even clearer. Iraola has started Van Dijk in all 10 Premier League matches this season, underlining his importance to the side\u2019s structure. He was given a rare rest in the Champions League, though his team still conceded three goals after he came off the bench against LASK.<\/p>\n
That appearance followed the previous 3-0 defeat to Manchester City, a match in which he finished with discomfort. \u201cI had a little knock in the end on my calf which is pretty painful,\u201d the Dutchman told reporters. The Daily Mail\u2019s Lewis Steele later reported that Van Dijk has been \u201cmanaging a little niggle\u201d since then.<\/p>\n
The issue has been downplayed for now, and there is no suggestion that the defender cannot play through it if required. The Netherlands remain well placed to reach the Nations League quarterfinals and have enough defensive depth to cover his absence, even if their captain\u2019s fitness will continue to draw attention.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Van Dijk has left the Netherlands camp injured, with Liverpool monitoring a problem that has lingered for weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22358,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[1047,242,180],"class_list":["post-22359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","tag-champions-league","tag-injury","tag-player-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}