After the final whistle, the Liverpool defender delayed celebrating his side reaching the semi-finals of the tournament to console Hategan, who was in a flood of tears.
The Dutchman’s embracing of the Hateganl perplexed onlookers, who were curious as to why the former Celtic man had put his arms around the match official.
Van Dijk shed some light on the incident in the post-match press conference, in which he revealed Hategan had recently lost his mother.
“That man broke down, stood with tears in his eyes because he had just lost his mother,” van Dijk told the media.
“I wished him strength and said that he had done well.
“It’s a small thing, but maybe it helps him.”
Moments before embracing the tearful Hategan, van Dijk booked Holland’s place in the semi-finals of the Nations League with an exquisite volley, which levelled the scores at 2-2.
The next round of the tournament will be held in Portugal, where Ronald Koeman’s men will face either the hosts, Switzerland or Portugal for a place in the final.
Koeman was delighted with his troops’ performance, saying: “The team showed character. We kept going.
“I didn’t think we played well. Maybe at this stage it’s too much for us to play two matches in such a short period of time against such high-quality opposition.
“Let’s not forget, this Germany is an excellent team, maybe even better than France.
“But we also showed that we can recover when playing opponents of this calibre.”
Germany boss Joachim Low was bitterly disappointed to see his team throw away a two-goal lead but took plenty of positives from the result.
“I’m a bit disappointed with the result, but I’ve seen more positives than negatives over the entire game,” he said.
“We have to make the third goal, which is, of course, bitter in the end. The faces in the dressing room were all a bit down.
“Everyone would have liked to have rewarded themselves today.
“This runs somewhat through 2018, that we do not succeed.
“Basically we still have a lot of work to do. We’ve only seen each other three weeks in total since the World Cup.
“The upheaval can’t just happen from one day to the next, you can’t just stomp a new team out of the ground.
“There is far too little time for that to happen. However, the process has been set in motion and has already progressed a bit.”