"It could have been the end of my life and I signed a will"

Virgil van Dijk feared for his life in the year 2012. The Liverpool defender admitted that he had even written a will in case he did not make it.

The defender was admitted to hospital for acute appendicitis, which led to peritonitis and a kidney infection. It was then that it was decided that he would have to undergo emergency surgery.

"The only thing I could see was tubes hanging from me. My body was broken and there was nothing I could do. That's when the worst thoughts started going through my head," Van Dijk explained in the Daily Mail.

"My life was at risk. My mother and I prayed to God and discussed possible scenarios. At some point I had to sign some papers, it was a kind of will," the Dutchman confessed about an operation when he was 20 years old.

Van Dijk's fear came to that point. "The reality is that nobody wanted to talk about it, but we had to. It could have been the end. I was in the hospital for 13 nights and it was very difficult, I couldn't walk," he added.

This happened to Van Dijk in 2012. He then moved to Glasgow Celtic and from there to Southampton, where he had his breakthrough. He was then taken by Liverpool to become the most expensive centre-back in history until Maguire joined Manchester United.