Virgil van Dijk has said that he wasn’t consulted by Liverpool about their decision to sack Arne Slot before the news was announced on Saturday, only learning of it a few hours after it had already entered the public domain.
It was widely reported that FSG would continue to back the 47-year-old despite the Reds’ difficult 2025/26 season, but a senior figure at the Boston-based firm later acknowledged that they ‘reluctantly had to’ part ways with him after finding that the ’emotion was sucked out of’ Anfield.
The Daily Mail‘s Lewis Steele reported that the sacking came as a surprise to the coach and the LFC players, and that’s certainly true of the club captain.
Speaking to Dutch outlet NOS (via Liverpool Echo) after Netherlands’ defeat to Algeria on Wednesday night, Van Dijk proclaimed that he wasn’t briefed in advance about Liverpool’s intentions to dismiss Slot and only discovered the news once he’d touched down in his homeland.
He said: “I landed in Amsterdam on Saturday afternoon and then it had already leaked. After that I naturally had conversations, but the decision was already taken. It is not like they ask me how or what.”
Barely concealing his annoyance over the situation, he added: “We are now living in a world where [every journalist] wants to be the first person to break the news. These people are the ones that benefit from it. Yeah… this is the reality.”
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The Reds captain then placed on record his gratitude for the 47-year-old and his staff ‘for everything they have meant, not only to me but also to the club’.
We don’t expect the hierarchy to consult everyone at the club about major hiring and firing decisions, but it does seem surprising that as captain, Van Dijk wasn’t informed of FSG’s intentions before they jettisoned Slot.
That he had no idea it was coming until finding out after he touched down in Amsterdam that afternoon also seems to hint that the decision was taken somewhat hurriedly, a school of thought backed up by the apparent surprise of the coach and players upon learning the news.
Would the 34-year-old have tried to convince the hierarchy to stick with his compatriot, had they sought his opinion or included him in the decision-making process? Possibly, but it’s a question to which we’ll never have a clear answer.
Once Van Dijk returns from the World Cup in a few weeks’ time, he and his Liverpool teammates will be getting accustomed to the rituals and tactical ideas of Andoni Iraola, who could be officially confirmed as our new head coach in the next day or two.
That in itself shows just how quickly football moves on – less than a week ago, it seemed for all the world as though Slot would be leading the Reds into a third season at the helm. Instead, he’s now unemployed and available for any opportunities of interest to him.
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