Van Dijk mentality laid bare with firm message to Rio Ngumoha after Liverpool starlet’s heroics | OneFootball

Virgil van Dijk is doing his utmost to keep Rio Ngumoha grounded after the teenager’s ‘dream debut’ in the Premier League on Monday night.

With Liverpool on the verge of being held to a 2-2 draw by Newcastle at St James’ Park, the 16-year-old was sprung from the bench six minutes into stoppage time to make his first top-flight appearance and just the second of his senior career.

Approximately 200 seconds later, the teenage winger had struck a sweetly-taken winning goal for the Reds, becoming the club’s youngest ever scorer in the process and earning glowing praise from teammate Jeremie Frimpong.

Van Dijk tells Ngumoha the hard work ‘starts now’

Van Dijk spoke to Sky Sports shortly after the final whistle on Tyneside, and while he implored Ngumoha to milk the moment, the Liverpool captain warned him not to get carried away off the back of his heroics last night.

The Dutchman said: “It was a dream debut for him…I’m very pleased for Rio. I’ve mentioned it to him already that it starts now.

“He has to keep working hard and stay humble, but he definitely has to enjoy these nights because you can’t take them for granted. I’m sure with the players that we have, he’ll be back at training and having a hard session tomorrow.”

(Photo by George Wood/Getty Images)

Van Dijk will keep Ngumoha’s feet on the ground (if needed)

Of course Ngumoha has every right to savour such a special moment in what’ll hopefully be an illustrious career, but thankfully he has the perfect players and coaches around him to ensure that he doesn’t let the winner at St James’ Park get to his head.

Journalist Oliver Holt shared a photo on X which shows the 16-year-old being put through his paces with some post-match running along with the other Liverpool substitutes as Arne Slot ensured that the teenager wasn’t getting any special treatment.

The challenge for the young winger now is to make sure that moments such as last night aren’t in isolation and that his career won’t be defined by just that one goal – do we remember anything else about Federico Macheda other than an equally dramatic late winner for Manchester United in 2009?

The richly experienced Van Dijk is the right man to ensure that Ngumoha – 17 years his junior – remains grounded and keeps doing what he’s supposed to be doing every day in training, so that in time he’ll become a fully-fleged presence in the Reds’ first team.

Hopefully his history-making goal on Monday night will be just the start of things to come for the prodigious teenager, who’s shown in recent weeks that he appears to have a monumentally high ceiling if his mindset can match his innate talent.