Virgil van Dijk already gave Liverpool 'confident' Xavi Simons prediction amid transfer admission

Liverpool is going to have a strong Dutch flavor next season. Its head coach and captain hail from Netherlands, as do two other important members of the squad.

The Reds have seen both sides of this in the past. Gérard Houllier and Rafael Benitez signed French and Spanish players respectively, but there was not a strong German theme to Liverpool’s transfer business during the Jürgen Klopp era.

Considering how his countryman Loris Karius performed in the 2018 Champions League final, that was probably for the best. New head coach Arne Slot will find a trio of Dutchman waiting for him at Anfield, and one of them has been speaking about Xavi Simons, a Netherlands international who is being linked with the Reds.

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The Netherlands squad at Euro 2024 contains Liverpool players past and present as well as others aside from Simons who have been rumored to be on the Reds’ radar in the past. The current trio of Cody Gakpo, Ryan Gravenberch and Virgil van Dijk are included, as is Gini Wijnaldum.

You can probably find Liverpool-related transfer stories for every other player if you dig deeply enough, but Memphis Depay, Jeremie Frimpong, Matthijs de Ligt and Donyell Malen prove the point for starters. Simons is merely the latest in a Dutch conveyor belt of Reds transfer intrigue.

He was unlucky not to score a famous goal in Netherlands’ 0-0 draw with France on Friday evening, with his strike ruled out due to Denzel Dumfries interfering with play in an offside position. Van Dijk was not impressed.

"We scored a goal that is a fair goal," he said. "He [France goalkeeper Mike Maignan] had no chance to get into that corner. But yeah, the English referee decided to disallow it."

Someone who has impressed the Liverpool captain far more than Anthony Taylor is Simons. “He is a very talented player who has so much to give," van Dijk said (via BBC Sport). "He can still be so much better than he is already but he has a good mentality, so I am not worried that won’t happen. I am confident in him."

Former Liverpool midfielder Bolo Zenden also praised Simons in the same article. "He blew away everybody with his style of play, his attitude, his pace, his skills," he said, in refence to Simons' spell with PSV Eindhoven in 2022/23 when he was just 19 years old. "He really looked like a full-grown player." It might be hard to find someone Dutch who isn’t a fan, to be honest.

Liverpool.com says: Simons is receiving praise from all quarters, and rightly so. It says a lot that van Dijk is praising his mentality, as that matters as much as his talent with a ball. Whether he moves to Liverpool or not, Simons clearly has fans at Anfield and elsewhere.