They are the captain and manager of a team who won the Premier League last year and who have made a 100 per cent start to the current season, but, as Virgil van Dijk and Arne Slot reminisced, it was about Champions League setbacks. Perhaps that is the mentality of winners: that they remember the defeats more than the wins. As they prepare for another continental campaign, the two Dutchmen can recall losing to Atletico Madrid.
Liverpool’s last game as Champions League holders came against Diego Simeone’s team. It was an end in more ways than one, the final game in a packed Anfield before Covid intervened. Liverpool lost 3-2. “It was a painful one,” said Van Dijk. “We got knocked out.”
