Speaking to Gary Neville on The Overlap, Virgil van Dijk said: "As a football player, if you have done something with your knee, that's the worst you can get. When that moment happened and I was in the van on the way to the clinic to get a scan immediately, I was just praying and hoping there.
"I always feel when I go down, I have to get up. I have to feel, I get knocks all the time but I feel if I'm standing up. I stood up and I walked and I felt the instability immediately. When I'm walking around the pitch, I had to go all the way to the corner of the stadium, I'm thinking 'what can this be? Is this it?'
"As we are in the corner, I couldn't walk anymore. I was limping. I did all these tests in the dressing room. There was a bit of a feeling that it was only going to be the MCL [Medial Collateral Ligament], so the inside. So I had a bit of hope that it could be positive, it could be okay.
"Three months and you'll be fine. Euros are coming in the summer. I went for the scan and I went home. I was home alone at that time actually, my wife and kids were back home in Holland. They flew back the next morning just to be with me. I got a call from my physio and he said, 'It's bad news'.
"Then the world collapsed. It was very, very tough to deal with. I had to wait a week to make sure it settled. Then I went to London to get the surgery. And then the rehab starts. The first three weeks were horrible. Pain, can't sleep. After that I went to Dubai and we were there for like seven or eight weeks.
"I had one of the best times of my life with my family there. Celebrating Christmas there. I saw the positive side of being together there and working each and every day, twice a day, hard, in order to be back as quickly as possible. But the beginning and the surgery was horrible."
Van Dijk's professional football career almost ended when the Dutchman picked up a major Anterior Cruciate Ligament injury back in October 2020.
The Liverpool centre-back collided with Everton goalkeeper Jordan Pickford at Goodison Park and had to spend the next nine months in recovery.
