Virgil van Dijk very nearly ruined one Arsenal player’s career – Our View

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Virgil van Dijk was interviewed on The Overlap this week, and one very interesting claim was made during his chat with Gary Neville.

Indeed, during a segment where van Dijk was speaking about some of his Liverpool teammates, he discussed Andy Robertson’s rise through the footballing ranks.

Van Dijk actually played against the left-back when he was a youngster at Dundee United, and according to the Dutchman, he asked Celtic to sign him at that point.

“He is one of the leaders in my opinion,” Van Dijk said.

“He is the captain of Scotland and I played against him playing at Celtic when he was at Dundee.”

“Funnily enough I was saying to our scouts that we should get him at Celtic.

“But he went on to Hull, but just in general playing with him has been incredible.”

Robertson would probably have been very keen to join Celtic at that point. After all, he’s a boyhood fan of the Glasgow outfit, and given his fandom, he may have stayed at Celtic Park for quite some time.

Of course, Celtic didn’t listen to van Dijk’s suggestion and Robertson instead moved to England, but if he had gone to Celtic, he would have completely changed the career path of one player – Kieran Tierney.

It was around this time that Tierney was breaking through as the next big thing at Celtic as a left-back, but if Robertson was at the club playing in that position, that opportunity may never have come for Tierney.

The Arsenal star may have had to settle for a spot on the bench or he potentially would have had to have moved positions, which could have drastically changed his career path.

Tierney, of course, very quickly established himself as one of Celtic’s most important players before getting a move to Arsenal, but it’s hard to imagine he’d ever have gotten such a big move in 2018 if Robertson was ahead of him in the Celtic pecking order.

Without that faith being placed in him as a youngster, Tierney really may not have become the player we know today, and his career could have turned out so differently.

Van Dijk’s suggestion never came to fruition, but if it had, there’s every reason to believe that Tierney wouldn’t be anywhere near as successful as he has been in recent years.