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Analysis: show why Arne Slot is the best Jurgen Klopp successor for Liverpool

TIRANA, ALBANIA - MAY 24: Arne Slot, Head Coach of Feyenoord gives instructions during a training session at Arena Kombetare on May 24, 2022 in Tirana, Albania. Feyenoord will face AS Roma in the UEFA Conference League final on May 25, 2022. (Photo by Alex Pantling/Getty Images)

After Jurgen Klopp’s emotional farewell at Anfield on Sunday, Liverpool can look forward to their new manager – as the man himself suggested.

Although the club has not officially announced it, Arne Slot will be Klopp’s successor. That will be quite a move for a man who had no senior head coaching experience just a decade ago and has never worked as a player or coach outside of the Netherlands.

Slot was not quite the public favourite to succeed Klopp when the German announced his departure at the end of the season.

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Xabi Alonso and Julian Nagelsmann were far more popular, but neither of them seemed interested in immediately leaving their current roles at Bayer Leverkusen and Germany respectively.

As a result, Liverpool decided to go to Feyenoord and ask for Slot, for whom they have paid a reported transfer fee of €10 million.

While Klopp has elevated Liverpool to a different level in his nine years at the club, it would be hard to argue that Slot’s record is any better than his was when he took over – at least on the surface.

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After hanging up his boots, the Dutchman began his senior coaching career as an assistant at Cambuur. He took over with a co-coach on an interim basis in the latter half of the 2016/17 season in the Eerste Divisie, turning the club’s season around before leaving for AZ Alkmaar.

He started as an assistant and eventually took over. In his first full season in charge, the 2019/20 campaign, he led AZ in a memorable title challenge against Erik ten Hag’s Ajax, finishing level on points with them in a season that was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In December 2020, he was announced as Feyenoord’s next manager for the subsequent season onwards.

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Before Slot arrived, Feyenoord finished fifth at the end of the 2020/21 campaign – their worst league position in over a decade.

Slot was tasked with taking them back to the top, and he did just that. After a strong podium finish in his first season at the club, he led them to their first league title in six years in 2022/23 and just the second since the turn of the century.

Has he taken them to a comfortable second place behind high-flying PSV Eindhoven this season.

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Style of play and tactics
The main reason Slot is such a great appointment for Liverpool is his style of play and its similarities to what Klopp has been doing at Liverpool for almost a decade.

Slot is arguably the most stylistically similar manager that Liverpool could have found in their scouting pool.

He has adopted a style of play that has a significant emphasis on intensity both in and out of possession. His side doesn’t mind keeping the ball, as their average of 62% possession in the league this season suggests.

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However, they do not tend to spend too much time circulating it around in the way that Manchester City or Arsenal do. They are direct and forward-minded with their passing and ball progression.

There is no fixed structural shape that Slot lives and dies by. Although his teams mostly line up in a 4-2-3-1 formation on paper, they can show many different things in practice.

Depending on the opponents and the players in his team, Slot mixes his team’s structure up quite regularly.

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He likes to use his full-back roles – between getting forward, staying deep and inverting – to regulate his side’s shape between various options such as a 2-4-1-3, 2-3-2-3 or 3-2-4-1.

The ultimate intention is to facilitate easy progression from the base of the side while generally attacking with very high and wide wingers and a line-leading striker to stretch the opposition’s backline.

They can open up space for their teammates in midfield or attack the edges of the opposition block themselves, both with the ball and by making off-ball runs in behind.

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He likes to have his players close around the ball in the centre to not only offer passing options but also prepare an intense and successful counterpress in case of turnovers.

Feyenoord’s goals per game average under Slot in his three seasons at the club have only been going up, starting at 2.2 in 2021/22, climbing to 2.4 in the title-winning campaign before peaking at 2.7 this term. Clearly, his preferred style of play can result in fireworks and certainly will not bore fans.

Feyenoord have been exciting to watch out of possession under Slot. They tend to proactively press their opponents high up the pitch.

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The Dutch side do not follow a set structure but alternate between a 4-2-3-1, 4-1-4-1 and 4-4-2 shape depending on how the opponents build up and how they want to spring pressing traps, which they can do both out wide or in the centre.

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