Liverpool legend Alan Hansen will hand current Reds captain Virgil van Dijk the Premier League trophy at Anfield on Sunday after Arne Slot’s side won the title in his debut season at the helm.
Hansen won eight league titles for the Reds and made a total of 620 appearances for the club. He was the last Liverpool captain to lift the trophy in front of fans back in 1990, because Jordan Henderson had to do it inside an empty stadium in 2020.
Hansen, who successfully fought off a serious illness last year, has been invited to present Van Dijk with the silverware following the game with Crystal Palace. Mark and Jo McVeigh, who lost their son Owen to leukaemia at the age of 11 in December 2015 and have since set up the Owen McVeigh Foundation, will also be part of the ceremony.
After the final whistle is blown in Liverpool vs Crystal Palace, the players will leave the field. A stage will be set up on the pitch and they will then come back on for the trophy presentation.
The game could be attended by former Liverpool managers Rafa Benitez and Jurgen Klopp. The pair are set to be on Merseyside this weekend for events celebrating the Reds winning a 20th top-flight title and drawing level with Manchester United.
After the trophy lift on Sunday, Van Dijk and the rest of the Liverpool players will travel around the city on an open-top bus, with hundreds of thousands of people expected to line the streets to revel in the achievements of this season.
(Image: Carl Recine/Getty Images)
“There’s a lot of — how do you call it? — I won’t say dreaming because it will be a reality but I can picture it and it will be a very emotional day,” Van Dijk told reporters at Stamford Bridge earlier this month.
“My family will be there, my mum, my wife, my kids. But until we get there, we must keep focusing on the games ahead of us and try to win the last three games in front of us.
“Hopefully [it will be] even better than what we had after the Champions League final. I already encouraged everyone to wear red in the last game and keep doing that for the rest of the season because everyone saw how amazing it was.
“For so many fans and people that have been going to Anfield for so many years it was one of their best days ever.
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“Hopefully the 25th will top that and the parade will be even more crazy than ever and there will be even more people coming from around the world to be in Liverpool to come and be with us.”
Liverpool has done a couple of trophy parades since Van Dijk arrived from Southampton in January 2018. The first was for winning the Champions League, but the second was after losing in the same competition to Real Madrid in 2022, when the Reds celebrated an FA Cup and League Cup double.
“It was a bit strange,” Van Dijk said of the most recent edition, with this one set to be very different. “What I said already, I encouraged everyone that supports Liverpool all around the world to come and celebrate an amazing year in the Premier League that we’ve had. But the day is not there, we still have three games.”
