Virgil van Dijk currently has 279 appearances for Liverpool to his name and has been capped 77 times by the Netherlands.

He is widely regarded as one of the best central-defenders of a generation.

But remember when he arrived at Celtic as a relatively unknown 21-year-old from Groningen in June 2013. 

Charlie Mulgrew, who was already in Neil Lennon's first team squad at the time, certainly does. 

Van Dijk, now 33, starred 115 times for Celtic before being sold to Southampton in a reported £13million switch after two seasons.

He scored 15 goals and managed to acquire two Scottish Premiership titles and the Scottish League Cup during his stint in Glasgow's East End. 

(Image: SNS Group) Liverpool spent a then-world-record £75m to sign him a few years later where he's since showcased to the world why Lennon and the Lennoxtown recruitment team were right to take a punt on him as a youngster.

Speaking on Undr The Cosh Podcast, Mulgrew explained how he could tell very quickly that the Dutch defender could be destined for greatness even if he had to quickly adapt to the the rough and tumble of Scottish football. 

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“Oh, his first day, he strolled forward with the ball. His first day, I’ll never forget it," Mulgrew recalled.

“£2.5million from Groningen we paid for him. There were a lot of signings like that at Celtic. It was a toss of a coin, what you were getting.

“But he looked the part, but then you never know. He strode forward with a game against Crewe. It was at the training ground and Crewe had come up for a pre-season friendly and he strode forward and hit the ball from about 35 yards on the underside of the bar and you were thinking, ‘This guy’s alright’.

“And he was brilliant. But his first competitive game was a Champions League qualifier against Karagandy and we got beat 2-0 away in Kazakhstan.

“And he got dropped for the home leg because he got bullied off of the striker. I remember it. And he got dropped.

“So this was the thing, he was used to playing in Holland and having a lot of the ball and probably a lot of it on the ground and all of a sudden we went there and it was just banging the ball long. 

“But he learned his lesson well because he never played a return leg and then he obviously never left the team after that.”