Why do footballers love going on holiday with one another? It is not something the rest of us tend to do with our colleagues, but when working in a high-profile career at rarefied levels of fame and wealth the only people who can truly understand you are your peers.

Footballers can speak freely to each other without fear of rolled eyes or betrayals to the press. About the unique challenges of negotiating a new shin-pad deal, your frustrations with the gaffer always asking you to stand on the near post at corners, the pain of having to make it into training at 9am before going home at midday. Or perhaps they are the only other ones who can afford the Marbella mark-up on bottles of Huel?

Little surprise, then, that players fraternise more than in other professions, although it still seems philosophically incorrect for friendships to cross the boundaries of club rivalries. Enter Kevin De Bruyne and Virgil van Dijk, brothers in three-letter initialism and seemingly best buds. If you just felt a ripple of anger in the Cheshire region, it was the discovery of this news by Roy Keane.

The Liverpool and Manchester City players have been spotted on holiday together for three consecutive years, usually in Ibiza. Marcus Rashford came one year, if any other members of the Class of 92 need a reason to feel apoplectic.

Usually Van Dijk and De Bruyne have taken in a performance from everyone’s favourite Scottish DJ, Calvin Harris. What do you mean it’s a thin field? Harsh on “Tiger” Tim Stevens.

As well as sharing a love for competent and commercially lucrative pop-dance, both players speak Dutch and their kids go to the same school.

What actually happens on these sorts of holidays remains somewhat opaque. Surely the days of beery benders are over for top-level footballers, but we did see a glimpse of what might be described generously as “partying” from 2023’s summer excursion to the Med. A tantalising six-second Instagram video posted by De Bruyne’s wife Michèle showed a seated VVD and standing KDB vibing at a beach bar. In between the two, a chap determinedly fluffing up his own hair using his front-facing camera as a mirror. Great times.

This is no private love-in either. They sought each other out after a 2-2 draw in Manchester in April 2022 and De Bruyne said afterwards: “I know Virgil, me and Virgil see each other a lot. Our children go to the same school and they like to play together, so it was just a friendly chat.”

Van Dijk was asked on Gary Neville’s The Overlap show who he would want to play with at Liverpool who he had not yet had as a team-mate and immediately went for De Bruyne. “I think he’s unbelievable. If he would have played at Liverpool we would have gone even further than we already have.

“I think he’s outstanding, good on the ball, pressing, scoring, he’s got everything as a modern-day midfielder and footballer in general. I think he’s an outstanding player.”

All very heart-warming and grown-up, but it is not exactly the sort of relationship upon which epochal rivalries are built. In fact, you can see a beautiful future together for Van Dijk and De Bruyne riding off into the sunset, almost certainly in Saudi Arabia, to a soundtrack of We Found Love.