Pierre van Hooijdonk, who made 84 appearances and scored 52 goals for Celtic during his playing career, recently appeared on ‘The Lockdown Tactics’ where he discussed Liverpool’s Virgil van Dijk and shared what his thoughts were on the centre-back during his time at Parkhead, which lasted from July 2013 until September 2015.
The 50-year-old Dutchman spoke positively about his compatriot during this appearance on The Lockdown Tactics and he shared that he was convinced of Van Dijk’s ability during the defender’s time at Celtic.
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Van Hooijdonk said: “For years, I was talking about Virgil van Dijk [and] that he needed to be a part of the national team.
“They were not interested because he played in Scotland and then they saw a Champions League game and then they say ‘look, he could have done more with this goal, his opponent scored two goals,’ or whatever.
“I said, yeah, but at Celtic – I watched Celtic several times during that season – he’s fantastic, he’s outstanding, they must give him a chance.
“He was ignored for a long time. When he moved to Southampton, I tweeted on the day he moved [that] I will not be surprised if this player, who is still the same player now that he was when he was playing with Celtic, is going to be picked in the first friendly game for the national team – what happened?
“That is just based on the label ‘Premier League’ or the ‘Scottish League’”.
Do you think that Virgil van Dijk was ignored by his national team during his time at Celtic?YES
NO
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TIF Thoughts…
As Van Hooijdonk explains, Van Dijk didn’t make his debut for the senior Dutch national team until October 2015, after he had left Celtic to join Premier League outfit Southampton just over a month prior.
Considering that he quickly made his debut for the Dutch national side after leaving Celtic, it may be understandable why Van Hooijdonk has claimed that Van Dijk was somewhat ignored by the national side simply because of the league he was playing in, as it may be somewhat unlikely that he improved that much between the time that he joined Southampton in September 2015 and when he made his debut for the Netherlands in October 2015.