‘Liverpool’s Virgil van Dijk shares link-up with Birmingham part-owner Tom Brady’
Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk has been pictured with former NFL star and Birmingham City co-owner Tom Brady.
Liverpool cruised to their second Premier League triumph last month, as they finished on 84 points, 10 ahead of their nearest title rivals Arsenal.
Van Dijk has long been a stalwart at the heart of the Reds’ backline, after he joined the club from Southampton for a fee of £75 million [BBC Sport] in January 2018.
He has been a key figure in numerous trophy wins for the club, like the Champions League in 2019 and Liverpool’s first Premier League title a year later, as well as their latest top-flight win.
It was imperative that the Reds tied him down to a new contract ahead of its July expiration, and Van Dijk signed a new two-year extension at Anfield in April prior to their title win and some much-needed off-time this summer.
Virgil van Dijk shares NFL legend image
Following Liverpool’s title celebrations, van Dijk was granted extra time-off after a long season before joining up with the Netherlands national team alongside Reds teammates Ryan Gravenberch and Cody Gakpo [Liverpool Echo], as well as new signing Jeremie Frimpong.
| Appearances | Goals | Assists | Yellow cards |
| 49 | 5 | 1 | 7 |
He has updated his Instagram with a couple of posts since the campaign’s end, and his most recent will undoubtedly draw attention from across both the football and American football world.
Van Dijk has spent time with the former New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback, who is now a Birmingham City co-owner in the UK and a Las Vegas Raiders minority owner in the US, with a post to each of their Instagram feeds to mark the link-up.
The Dutchman simply chose to caption the post with a handshake emoji, likely a nod to the admiration that the pair share for each other’s exploits in their respective sport.
Tom Brady’s connections to Van Dijk will excite Birmingham City supporters
California-native Brady is regarded as the best quarterback of all-time in the NFL, and is the league’s most-decorated player with seven Super Bowl titles, but he has chosen to lend his expertise to European football since his official retirement from playing in 2023.
The 47-year-old became a minority owner of EFL side Birmingham in August 2023, with the Blues headed by American business Tom Wagner, who is the co-founder and co-owner of Knighthead Capital Management.
Brady has been public in the media about his endeavours in the Second City, and he often took to social media to support the club last season as they aspired to return to the Championship following relegation to League One.
His connections with the ambitious Blues look set to continue in the second-tier and beyond, with chairman Wagner previously admitting to The Telegraph that he has ambitious plans for the club to be “in the top 10 of the Premier League” in the near future.
Brady’s link-up with Van Dijk, who has clearly settled in England over his last 10 years of playing in the country, will surely excite supporters of the St Andrews club, who might dream of the Dutchman pulling on a royal blue shirt towards the end of his career.
It is something that is obviously not likely to happen any time soon, but Brady could well have sowed the seeds for a deal to materialise in the future if Birmingham are able to establish themselves in the top-flight in the coming seasons.