Premier League: spectacular style, Guardiola fan, gesture in his name... 5 things to know about Arne Slot, the coach targeted by Liverpool

Arne Slot, the Feyenoord coach favored to succeed the German Jurgen Klopp as Liverpool coach, is described in the Netherlands as an enthusiastic but undemonstrative coach, adept at spectacular football, as he has demonstrated these last two seasons at the head of the Rotterdam team.

In three seasons at the helm of Feyenoord (his second club after managing AZ Alkmaar), Slot built a reputation as a daring coach, adept at spectacular but effective football, capable of raising the level of his young players like his model... Pep Guardiola. “The players are still very good under the orders of the City manager while they seemed less efficient with their previous coaches,” said Slot, 45, to the newspaper Algemeen Dagblad at the end of 2023. Recently, the British press said already nicknamed Slot the “Dutch Pep Guardiola” due to his high-pressing attacking style, which is popular with Feyenoord fans. Unlike Guardiola, however, Slot always plays with a real number 9 and never changes his pattern to 4-2-3-1

Arne Slot has acquired a reputation as a manager who insists on the physical impact of his players. “At Feyenoord, I tell my players: you have to create four times as many chances as your opponent and work twice as hard,” he told Algemeen Dagblad. “In all the matches we have won this season, we see in the data that we have run 20 or 30% more than the opponent. In the games we didn’t win, we only ran three or six percent more.”

Liverpool are not the only Premier League club to be interested in the Dutch coach. In May 2023, when Tottenham were looking for a successor to Italian Paolo Conte, Spurs were close to recruiting him. Slot then preferred to sign a new contract with Feyenoord “not considering himself ready for England”, indicated the ANP press agency. A year earlier he had also been cited in Leeds. “The deciding factor was playing the Champions League with Feyenoord. From a private point of view, staying in Rotterdam was the best option for my well-being at the time,” Slot said. Feyenoord's Champions League campaign started with a bang with a 2-0 home victory against Celtic Glasgow, but two defeats against Atlético Madrid sealed the club's fate, third in Group E.

According to the Dutch magazine Voetbal International, Slot is part of Rafaela Pimenta's team and this former Brazilian lawyer is demanding 10 million euros from Liverpool to buy out the contract of her protégé, linked until June 30, 2026 with Feyenoord.

Unknown in Europe until recent days, Arne Slot was also unknown in the flat country before taking charge of Feyenoord. He was an average player revealed at PEC Zwolle (where he finished his career after stints at Breda and Sparta Rotterdam). Reputed to be a good technician but not very combative. “A lot of people thought Arne was lazy and phlegmatic,” his former coach Jan Everse recently told public broadcaster NOS. The latter describes his playing style as “silky” and “cultured”. And, in the Netherlands, the future Liverpool coach gave his name to a technical gesture the “Arne pass”, a feint shifted backwards to better launch a winger.