Liverpool coach Giovanni van Bronckhorst has opened up about how he wanted Feyenoord to sign Virgil van Dijk.

On the pitch, Van Bronckhorst has been particularly struck by the mentality of the players he has worked with almost every day over the past month

“To be competitive in all the competitions we face, you have the quality but I think the most important thing in being involved in successful set-ups is character.

“The character we have in this group and the desire of the players to become better, to be competitive every day, that is what you notice

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"No matter what kind of exercises we’re doing on the pitch, you see the competition is really high and everyone wants to win, which makes it very competitive for us as well to make sure everything is done right.

“If you make one mistake as a coach on the pitch and the player loses..

Because of the environment we create and the players create with their character and attitude, they are also very competitive in the games and that’s what we want.

"We want to be competitive, we want to win every game and you can see that desire even in the little games we play to do the body wake-up in the morning, little games in warm-ups, in training..

You can see it is the DNA of this club and we are just here to continue that and make sure it is maintained.”