Jurgen Klopp warning ignored as Virgil van Dijk at risk of falling victim to injury worry

Liverpool fans will be hoping Virgil van Dijk's departure from the Netherlands camp was purely precautionary after the decision was taken that he would return to Merseyside ahead of his country's Nations League meeting with Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Van Dijk is one of two Dutch players to have left the squad, with Barcelona's Frenkie de Jong also returning to his club as the midfielder's fitness is carefully managed on his comeback from a serious ankle injury.

"For both Frenkie and Virgil it is better for them to leave the training camp at this moment," Netherlands manager Ronald Koeman said. "That decision was taken on medical grounds, with of course the interest of the players coming first."

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Van Dijk had been injury-free this season heading into the international break — and there has been no confirmation that he is injured now — but the fact that Koeman said the decision for the defender to leave the Dutch camp had been taken on medical grounds will prompt concern among Reds supporters.

The Liverpool captain has played in every minute of the team's Premier League and Champions League campaigns so far, only being afforded rests in the Carabao Cup, while he has also played in four of the Netherlands' five games this season.

The fixture list is only set to intensify in the coming weeks and months, with Liverpool scheduled to play nine times in December, and even if Van Dijk is not injured now, Arne Slot will surely end up having to rest the 33-year-old at some point in the coming weeks — perhaps in games that he doesn't actually want to.

The hectic fixture schedule is one thing that Slot's predecessor lamented with regularity during his time as Liverpool manager; Jurgen Klopp was not a fan of how many games his Liverpool side had to play.

Speaking in 2020, Klopp said: "If you have a good friend and you see him twice a year, brilliant. Best time of your life. If you see him every day you think after five days, ‘what the heck?’. But what we do is throw football at the people... We love this game but in the end we have to make sure that we can all come through and in the end the best team wins and not the most lucky with injuries."

By the time the new year rolls around, there will have been a total of 33 competitive matches for club and country that Van Dijk could have been eligible to play in since the beginning of the season. In the second half of the campaign, Liverpool alone — although unlikely — could play a maximum of 40 matches, while there are also four more international games that Van Dijk could play in by mid-June.

A 77-game season — more than double the amount of matches that Liverpool will play in a full league season — is frankly ludicrous, and it is little wonder that talk of strike action has increased among players in recent times.