Van Dijk determined to win trophies at Liverpool

Defender Virgil van Dijk is having a great time as a Liverpool player and is determined to win trophies with the club but knows the hard work is only just beginning.

A 3-2 win over Paris St Germain extended their 100 per cent start to the season to six matches as the players have responded to their Champions League final defeat to Real Madrid last May in impressive style.

Van Dijk’s displays give the impression he has been marshalling the Reds’ defence for years but he is only just beginning his first full season having joined for £75million, a world-record fee for a defender, in January.

In that short time he has barely put a foot wrong and has made a huge difference to Liverpool’s backline so it is no wonder he is having so much fun.

“I’m enjoying every single bit of it,” he said.

“You know, it’s a great time to be a Liverpool player, you want to play these games, you want to play these clubs we are going to face. You want to play at the highest level (and), you know, enjoy it.

“I want to win things, I want to create memories here and write history as well with all these boys.

“You need to have ambitions, and with the size of this club, with the people around here and the history of the club, we want to try and win everything.

“It’s going to be hard, it’s going to be something very difficult to do, but you know we are going to just try it.”

Even though they came up short against Madrid in the biggest game of Jurgen Klopp’s reign so far four months ago Van Dijk insists that has not affected their confidence.

He believes the way they played against PSG, dominating the first half and taking a 2-0 lead, shows they are comfortable taking on Europe’s heavyweights once again.

“If you are gonna be on the pitch and don’t believe it then you’d better stay home,” he added.

“You need to have belief, you need to have belief in everyone in your team and I have all the belief that’s there in this team.

“If you look at the team we have, if you look at the whole squad, players who are not even in the squad who have so much potential and so much quality, it says a lot about our team.

“Obviously in the end it is about hard work, making sure everyone is there for each other and I think it started for us in the pre-season.

“Hopefully we can keep on going. We’ve had a good start. There will be a day when we have downs as well, but then it is how we react – and I am not worried about anything.

“We don’t need to take anything for granted, we have to keep working hard and stay humble. We can’t get ahead of ourselves, we have to keep both feet on the ground.

“We want to compete for every competition like we did last year, and we wanted to start well this time.

“We’ve had a good start to the season, nothing has been won yet, we need to show it every week, every three days now.”