We Don’t Need Another Hero

Virgil Van Dijk is the captain of Liverpool Football Club and the Netherlands national team.

During his career he has been voted the best player in the Premier League, best player in the Champions League and he was just pipped by Lionel Messi for the 2019 Ballon d’Or (the award for the best player in the world).

That's amazing for a defender, because these awards almost always go to goalscorers (only three defenders have won the Ballon d'Or in seven decades).

In the 2018-19 season not a single opposition player managed to dribble past him.

He’s very good at his job.

As former Premier League striker Troy Deeney, one admitted, “I’ve said it many times, I hate him, I hate going up against him. He’s too big, too strong, too quick, too good on the ball, loves fighting, a good head of hair. It smells lovely!”

And he makes it look effortless.

So why is someone this important and this good only the 8th most popular Liverpool player by shirt sales?

Effortless ≠ Entertaining

Total control and making things look effortless is just not much fun to watch.

You rarely see Virgil Van Dijk perform the spectacular.

Because he rarely makes mistakes, he doesn't need to recover things in a dramatic way.

You don’t often see him sprinting.

You don't see him lose his temper.

And you don't see him doing any last-gasp sliding tackles. In fact he doesn't even seem to tackle all that much either and surely that's the point of having a defender? In the 2024-25 Premier League season there were 260 players who made more successful tackles per game than he did.

Upstream Thinking

Virgil Van Dijk makes it all look effortless because he is a master at thinking upstream of the crisis.

He is constantly anticipating where potential issues might happen so that he can intercept the play, or control it, before things get critical.

He’s always controlling his positioning and the team around him to nullify the other team’s attack before it gets started.

And by being ahead of the game Van Dijk builds in slack to allow him to fix any problems that do start happening in the most efficient (and dull) way possible.

He doesn't have to perform last ditch heroics, because he's resolved the potential treat before they even had a chance to become problems.

“If I have to make a tackle then I have already made a mistake.” - Paolo Maldini

Anti-Heroic

We love heroes and celebrating them.

When someone heroically works late nights, fixes a bug, saves a client relationship, or succeeds in a last ditch sliding tackle, it gets lots of positive reaction.

And being the hero is a great feeling.

But frequent heroic efforts at work are often a sign of a failing system - failures in processes, resources, or leadership.

It's a sign that people are not thinking upstream to anticipate and defuse the issues before they escalated.

Celebrating heroics is natural, but creating a system where heroics are unnecessary is far more valuable.

To shift things upstream:

• Fix the cause, not just the symptom - Assess and improve processes to identify bottlenecks and streamline workflows.
  

• Create slack in the system - Ensure adequate resources (time, tools, personnel) are available.
  

• Don't accept heroics instead of effective leadership  - Leaders must take responsibility for systemic failures and not expect employees to keep the wheels on by performing miracles.
  

• Collaborate  - Heroes emerge when communication breaks down, so foster an honest and collaborative culture where everyone contributes.

And if you can do that there will be less heroics, there might be less recognition, but the business will be in fundamentally better shape.

“Attack wins you games, defence wins you titles.” - Alex Ferguson

Next time a crisis looms in your organisation, project or team, ask the question "What would Virgil Van Dijk do?"