Sitting beside his new coach<\/a> Xavi Hern\u00e1ndez ahead of Thursday’s UEFA Nations League meeting with Germany, the 35-year-old took aim at claims he had urged former boss Ronald Koeman to play with five defenders against Morocco.<\/p>\n\u00a0“One of your colleagues (Valentijn Driessen, a journalist at De Telegraaf) claimed that I suggested playing with five defenders against Morocco,” Van Dijk said. “This is ridiculous talk. This story has been blown out of all proportion, as if it were the reason for our exit. That was not the case.”<\/p>\n
He continued: “The tactical plan is not my responsibility, and at the moment, I am not thinking about playing with five defenders. All sorts of nonsense have spread, and this happens far too often.”<\/p>\n
“Koeman and I were singled out as the culprits, as if we had destroyed Dutch football,” he added.<\/p>\n
You can discuss the topics and news in more depth on the Kooora forums<\/p>\n
Then he rounded on Driessen, the man who started it all. “You said I destroyed Dutch football, but you know nothing about it.”<\/p>\n
“I did not decide that the Netherlands national team should play with five players,” he went on.<\/p>\n
\u00a0The Liverpool defender also aired his frustration at being treated, as he sees it, differently at home. “You and your colleagues contribute to this. I see a difference in how I am viewed in the Netherlands and the rest of the world. If you analyse my career… we should all be judged in the same way. I do not feel I am judged like anyone else.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Virgil van Dijk lost his cool at a press conference today, hitting back at a rumour that had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":625199,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[282694,79402,170,85,46,29334,282695,12512,282294,105,252612,138250,6866],"class_list":["post-625198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-africa-cup-of-nations-qualification","tag-gabon","tag-germany","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-morocco","tag-morocco-vs-gabon","tag-netherlands","tag-netherlands-vs-germany","tag-sports","tag-uefa-nations-league-a","tag-v-van-dijk","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=625198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/625199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}