Brentford's Sepp van den Berg Praises Liverpool's Virgil van Dijk For Helping With Difficult Liverpool Start
Liverpool captain, Virgil van Dijk, has been praised by former Liverpool defender, Sepp van den Berg following a difficult start to his Liverpool career.
Sepp moved from the Netherlands as a teenager, with his family over 300 miles away, the young defender has discussed in an interview with his current club, Brentford, his thoughts and feelings on his career so far.
When discussing the challenges of the move at such a young age:
“I know I’m very privileged. I’m living the dream.
“But it’s not always as easy as it looks. For example, when I first moved to Liverpool as a 17-year-old; looking back, it was very difficult. 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. And then you come home… I lived alone, I had no one to talk to. That was hard for me.
“I struggled with that quite a lot because I was used to being surrounded by a big family where there’s a lot going on and there was always lots of people around 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."
Sepp credited his national teammate and former captain, Virgil van Dijk. Virgil was there for support both on and off the pitch during Sepp's difficult move to Merseyside as a young teenager.
“Van Dijk made me feel really welcome. 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.
“Watching what he does, how he plays, how he speaks, how he leads the team - to see that up close was priceless.”
Sepp joined Liverpool in 2019 on a move from PEC Zwolle, for a fee of €1.90million at the time. The 22-year-old spent many years on loan, with spells at Preston, FC Schalke 04 and finally FSV Mainz 05 before returning to Liverpool under Arne Slot, the new Head Coach.
Sepp then joined London outfit, Brentford on a permanent deal valued at €23.60million and a sell on clause of 17.5% for the youg Dutchman.
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