LIVERPOOL, England– Virgil van Dijk walked gingerly around the side of the field, ruefully shaking his head, muttering under his breath. He stopped to offer Jürgen Klopp a grimace and then trudged on, out of Goodison Park. That will be the last Liverpool, and the Premier League, sees of the Dutchman for rather a long time.
For how long, exactly, is not yet understood. On Sunday, a specialist verified what both the gamer and his coach feared because brief pause in the Merseyside derby: Van Dijk has actually damaged the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee. It is too early to evaluate, specifically, the level of the damage, however not too early to know that van Dijk needs surgical treatment.
Just after that occurs will Liverpool be able to put a time frame on van Dijks rehab and healing. The finest case is that he can imitate Antonio Rüdiger, the German protector who sustained a comparable injury in June 2016 and was playing again by October of that year.
In either case, Liverpool must now carry out a substantial portion of its Premier League title defense without the central pillar of its back line, a gamer who had actually played 74 consecutive league video games and who had actually barely missed out on a minute of domestic competitors in the 2 and a half years because coming to Anfield.
More apt still is the fact that the severity of van Dijks knee injury did not seem to be the primary source of controversy in its instant aftermath. Rather, the focus was on why Pickford got away any punishment for what appeared to be an apparent red card offense.
The theory emerged that Michael Oliver, the on-field referee, and David Coote, his coworker in the video bureau, could not punish Pickford for an event that happened when van Dijk was offside. After 130 years of arranged, codified soccer in England, a loophole seemed to have appeared in which, when the ball was no longer in play, everybody had carte blanche to do what they liked.
That was later amended: Pickford would have been penalized had he been guilty of serious foul play, but (appropriately or mistakenly) in the eyes of Oliver and Coote, that did not apply.
It is worth stopping briefly, however, to consider that this is where the introduction of video assistant referees, and the subsequent rewording of the games regulations to stay up to date with the innovation, has brought us: the idea that perhaps there is a glaring gray area in the rules that has actually gone unnoticed in the last century is no longer especially unimaginable. All of an abrupt, nobody really knows where they stand anymore.
The fact that Liverpool, after the game, wrote to the Premier League requesting an explanation regarding why Pickford was not reprimanded– along with asking for definitive proof of the offside decision that had actually denied Klopps team a late winning goal– has the air of sour grapes. However there will be few clubs that have actually not felt aggrieved by some V.A.R. choice they do not fully understand over the last season or so.
It may be valuable, then, for more than simply Klopps burning sense of oppression, for the Premier League and its authorities to consider why this keeps happening, and to wonder if, maybe, the guidelines of the video game are essentially weakened if those playing and viewing it do not think them to be just. Soccer is policed by consent, after all, and that consent is subsiding and thinning.
Certain injuries have implications that extend beyond the discomfort and anguish felt by the gamer who has suffered them; they have the capability to change the course of the season.
Tomas Rosicky, the previous Arsenal midfielder, has argued that his team may have won the Premier League in 2008 had Eduardo, its Croatian-Brazilian striker, not sustained a career-threatening injury in a video game at Birmingham. And a line may be drawn between Roy Keanes lack in 1998 and Manchester Uniteds collapse in the Premier League title race. Inter Milan may not have had to wait so long between Serie A crowns at the end of the last century had Ronaldo, the Brazilian striker widely considered the finest player worldwide at the time, not torn the tendons in his knee late in 1999.
The same is not always real, of course: Arsenal (once again) lost Robert Pires to injury in 2002 as it went after a league and cup double, and went on to win both anyway. Five games into this season, then, Liverpool needs to not yet be crossed out. However in this case it is challenging to see how the context of the injury does not exacerbate the consequences.
It is possible to see, in what occurred to van Dijk, a twinkle of nearly every element of soccer in 2020. The event that caused it felt noticeably au courant: the Everton goalkeeper, Jordan Pickford, has invested the last couple of years getting a reputation for a propensity to act first and believe later on, one that has led to spiraling require him to lose his put on Englands national group.
More immediately, however, is what van Dijks lack means for Liverpool. Losing a player of his stature would be damaging in any season, in any situation, however to do so in this project is especially uncomfortable.
In the 75 days between now and Jan. 1, the soonest readily available date Liverpool can acquire a replacement or support, Klopps group must play 17 video games in the Premier League and the Champions League. (Its schedule would have been even much heavier had it not been eliminated from the League Cup by Arsenal.) That has to do with when every four days.
And it needs to do so with only 2 fit, senior, specialist central defenders: Joel Matip and Joe Gomez, both of whom have vaguely checkered injury histories themselves. The next option, Fabinho, is a central midfielder by trade, blessed an emergency center back by Klopp partially through option– he chooses working with a little team– and partially out of need: His spending power this summer season was restricted because of the financial effect of the coronavirus pandemic, and he identified that the cash was much better invested in other places.
In a season so compact and condensed, injuries are much more likely than typical to be the identifying consider who is successful and who does not. The teams that triumph– across Europe– this season will not just need to stand out, they will need to endure, too. Titles might well go to the last group standing. It might be that when it is all over, we come to see that minute, as van Dijk trudged round the field at Goodison Park, as the one in which Liverpool fell.
LIVERPOOL, England– Virgil van Dijk walked gingerly around the side of the field, ruefully shaking his head, muttering under his breath. That will be the last Liverpool, and the Premier League, sees of the Dutchman for quite some time.
Only after that happens will Liverpool be able to put a time frame on van Dijks rehab and recovery. In the 75 days in between now and Jan. 1, the soonest readily available date Liverpool can obtain a replacement or reinforcement, Klopps team should play 17 video games in the Premier League and the Champions League. It might be that when it is all over, we come to see that minute, as van Dijk trudged round the field at Goodison Park, as the one in which Liverpool fell.
