Van Dijk, centre, said that Liverpool will be ready to take on a Real Madrid side which has plenty of experience

Virgil van Dijk stands as the antidote to the complaint that Liverpool are utterly unprepared for what awaits them in the Olimpiyskiy Stadium tonight.

He already boasts experience of a Champions League final, one involving Real Madrid no less and which, by the end, also yielded a small, but important victory for Jürgen Klopp.

It is a year since Van Dijk, then of Southampton, was invited by sponsors Sony to attend the 2017 showpiece at the Millennium Stadium, where he witnessed Zinédine Zidane’s side become the first team in the modern era to retain their title.

And yet his enduring memory is not of Cristiano Ronaldo scoring twice in a 4-1 rout of Juventus, but the reception he received before kick-off and the requests directed