I got dropped by Liverpool and people forgot about me – I didn’t talk to anyone and found it hard

The centre-back made four appearances during his first season at anifild, only for two of them to come as part of academy sides in the absence of the first team, and never played a competitive match for the club again after February 2020.

Van den Berg bounced back in emphatic fashion, impressing on loan at the likes of Preston North End and Mainz before completing a £25m move to Brentford in the summer. And he has since established himself as first-choice for the Bees, making 11 appearances so far this season to date.

But speaking in Brentford official matchday programme he has opened up on just how difficult he found it at liverpool after he stopped training with the first team squad.

“I know I’m very privileged. I’m living the dream,” Van den Berg said. “But it’s not always as easy as it looks. For example, when I first moved to Liverpool as a 17-year-old; looking back, it was very difficult. I had some tough times there.

“At first, I was training with the first team and everything was amazing, it couldn’t get any better. My dreams came true: I was playing for one of the biggest teams in the world.

“But then I got dropped into the reserves and people started to forget about me a little bit.

“And then you come home… I lived alone, I had no one to talk to. That was hard for me.

“I struggled with that quite a lot because I was used to being surrounded by a big family where there’s a lot going on and there was always lots of people around me.

“I didn’t talk to anyone about my feelings at the start, which made things really hard. I was just in my own head, coming home and just staring at the walls with nothing to do.”

While Van den Berg might allude to struggling with his mental health while at Liverpool, he also praised Virgil van Dijk for trying to help him acclimatise at Anfield.

“Van Dijk made me feel really welcome,” Van den Berg said. “I remember, on my first day, he said to the kit man, ‘Make sure his place in the dressing room is next to mine’.

“It was those small things that made me feel more at home. From a footballing perspective, it was just watching him in training and in matches, he was the best defender in the world at that stage… those moments will always stay with me.

“Watching what he does, how he plays, how he speaks, how he leads the team – to see that up close was priceless.