Following Atalanta’s unexpected triumph over Liverpool, one of the Italian club’s players playfully reached out to Virgil van Dijk on social media.
Liverpool, managed by Jurgen Klopp, experienced one of their most significant home losses in European play, falling to Atalanta 3-0 during the Europa League quarter-final’s opening match on Thursday evening.
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Gianluca Scamacca, the ex-West Ham forward, netted a pair of goals before Mario Pasalic sealed the deal, marking Atalanta’s second notable win in Liverpool in recent times.
Faced with this defeat, Liverpool is on the brink of exiting the tournament, necessitating an extraordinary turnaround in the upcoming second leg in Italy.
Van Dijk, the Liverpool captain, conceded post-match that his team’s performance warranted the loss.
“Obviously it’s not great. A very, very disappointing evening. Too many individual mistakes and we got punished for it. It feels bad,” he said.
“With the man-marking system they do, we have to do much better. When we have the ball we have to do better and be much stronger. The spaces were open and they punished us immediately.”
Van Dijk added: “If you don’t believe, there’s no point going to Italy. We have made it very hard for ourselves going there 3-0 down.”
Martin de Roon, who shares the Dutch national team jersey with Van Dijk, didn’t miss the opportunity to playfully jab at his teammate.
Following the match, de Roon hopped on Instagram to share a video poking fun at Van Dijk, celebrating Atalanta’s victory at Anfield.
De Roon shared a clip of the duo shaking hands with a speech bubble graphic added to himself, which read: “If we win, don’t tackle me in the national squad.”
He posted the video alongside the caption: “What an insane night.”
De Roon then followed that up with another picture of him celebration, with the caption: “0-3 at Anfield wasn’t a dream, apparently.”
Van Dijk might not have appreciated De Roon’s humorous post and is certainly looking forward to the chance for retribution when Liverpool meets Atalanta again for the second leg in Italy this Thursday.
