Willem II have given a permanent tribute to one of their academy graduates by renaming the main stand at their youth stadium the Virgil van Dijk Tribune.<\/p>\n
Van Dijk\u2019s connection to the Tilburg club runs deep. He spent 11 years within Willem II\u2019s youth setup before joining Groningen in 2010. He never made a senior appearance for Groningen but remains closely tied to his boyhood club.<\/p>\n
The renaming coincides with the launch of Virgil\u2019s Legacy Trophy, an Under-13s tournament organised with Van Dijk\u2019s involvement. The competition will bring together the clubs the defender represented during his career, with Liverpool, Southampton, Celtic, Groningen and Willem II among the invited sides. Eleven other teams will also take part at the tournament in Tilburg this September.<\/p>\n
On the recognition, Van Dijk said: \u201cIt makes me very proud,\u201d Van Dijk said of the tribute . \u201cWillem II has played an important role in my life and in my development as a young player.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat this is now recognised in this way means a lot to me and my family. It is a very special tribute and I appreciate the warmth and connection I still feel with the club.\u201d<\/p>\n
Willem II\u2019s general manager Merijn Goris spoke of the wider purpose behind the gesture: \u201cVirgil means so much to Willem II and to our youth academy. We wanted to give him something lasting.<\/p>\n
The new stand name will be visible throughout youth fixtures and serves as a nod to the club\u2019s role in Van Dijk\u2019s early development as the tournament brings young players from the involved clubs together in Tilburg. The move is both a local acknowledgement and a practical celebration of the link between the first steps taken in a club academy and the career that followed for one of the game\u2019s leading centre backs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Willem II rename youth main stand the Virgil van Dijk Tribune ahead of the U13s Legacy tournament..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2647,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,974],"tags":[975],"class_list":["post-2648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-willem-ii","tag-virgil-van-dijk-tribute"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2648","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=2648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}