Virgil van Dijk showed true colors as Liverpool teammate struggled in 'tough times'

Virgil van Dijk showed captain material years before Liverpool appointed him the actual honor ahead of the 2023

The 33-year-old defender has helped pioneer a Dutch revolution at the club in recent seasons featuring the likes of and key first-teamers and .

Liverpool was once home to the talented Sepp van den Berg, a 17-year-old who joined the club for a nominal fee in 2019 after 22 appearances with PEC Zwolle in the Eredivisie. The youngster was under immense pressure as the club signed no other players despite .

In a recent interview with his new club , spoke about his initial struggles with the club.

"When I first moved to Liverpool as a 17-year-old; looking back, it was very difficult," the now 22-year-old admitted. "I had some tough times there….At first, I was training with the first team and everything was amazing, it couldn’t get any better. My dreams came true: I was playing for one of the biggest teams in the world."

"But then I got dropped into the reserves and people started to forget about me a little bit," he continued. “And then you come home. I lived alone, I had no one to talk to. "

"That was hard for me. I didn’t talk to anyone about my feelings at the start, which made things really hard. I was just in my own head, coming home and just staring at the walls with nothing to do."

Van den Berg featured just four times for Liverpool in his first season (exclusively in cup competitions). Before eventually embarking on a series of loan spells, an elder voice in the Reds changing room came to his aid.

“Van Dijk made me feel really welcome,” he said. “I remember, on my first day, he said to the kit man, ‘Make sure his place in the dressing room is next to mine’, and it was those small things that made me feel more at home."

“From a footballing perspective, it was just watching him in training and in matches, he was the best defender in the world at that stage, those moments will always stay with me."

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Van den Berg would join Championship side Preston North End on loan in the 2021 January transfer window for a year-and-a-half before a spell at Schalke in 2022-23.

The young Dutch defender starred for Mainz last season on loan and helped the Bundesliga side narrowly stave off relegation. His string of impressive performances .

He's started seven Premier League matches this campaign for the midtable Bees. Despite coming through the PEC Zwolle and Liverpool ranks as a central defender, Van den Berg has primarily featured at right-back this year.