It’s fair to say that Arne Slot wouldn’t have been top of many Liverpool fans’ lists for a new manager at the time that Jurgen Klopp announced in January that he’d be leaving at the end of this season.
Once the intial shock of that news had been processed, plenty of a red persuasion championed the cause of Xabi Alonso, who’s enjoyed a phenomenal Bundesliga-winning campaign with Bayer Leverkusen and, of course, graced Anfield for five years as a pure wizard of a midfielder.
However, after the Spaniard fell out of contention after he reaffirmed his commitment to the German club, FSG’s search for the new man in the dugout eventually led them to the Feyenoord boss.
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Despite Slot leading the Rotterdam club to an overdue Eredivisie title and a European final, he still had his sceptics on these shores once it became clear that his appointment at Liverpool would be imminent.
Richard Keys has dismissed the 45-year-old as ‘Arne Ten Slot’ in a disparaging reference to Erik ten Hag, while Robbie Fowler admitted that he had to consult Google to find out more about him, and Jamie Carragher argued that Anfield chiefs should’ve given more consideration to Thomas Tuchel.
Dutch football journalist Süleyman Özturk was angered by such insularity among pundits in the UK, effectively accusing Slot’s detractors of analysis so lazy that it’s akin to a college student asking someone: ‘Hey, can I use essay writing services for my assignment?
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Granted, managing a leading Premier League club comes comes with greater challenges than succeeding in Eredivisie, but plenty of what we’ve heard about Klopp’s likely replacement suggests that he could continue the German’s exceptional work at Liverpool.
The 45-year-old is renowned for being an excellent communicator who conducts training sessions which strike the right balance of challenging players without being overly intense, while he’s also receptive to input from playing and coaching staff but will ultimately have the final say.
Albeit in a much different era where information was less readily available, think back to one infamous headline which greeted a certain former Arsenal manager when he came to north London in 1996 – ‘Arsene who?’. Suffice to say that a rather definitive answer was delivered by the time he departed the Gunners 22 years later.
We often hear pundits on British broadcasters proudly proclaim the Premier League to be the ‘best in the world’, almost as if every other top flight in Europe is a proverbial farmers league by comparison.
Out of the 12 clubs who remain in European competition this week, only one is English. Perhaps we shouldn’t be so dismissive of coaches or players who are excelling on the continent but not (yet) a household name on these shores.