What it's like to play for Arne Slot: 'Liverpool's squad will be amazed' (2024)

It is the story of Netherlands international Lutsharel Geertruida that helps explain the management style of Arne Slot.

Geertruida is a shining light in the first team at leading Dutch club Feyenoord, a player whose status skyrocketed under the guidance of his now former boss.

Slot helped the now 24-year-old progress from an academy graduate into a player now equipped for a bigger challenge at a higher-profile team. He also turned Geertruida, who speaks with a stutter, into a leading voice within the dressing room and discovered how to best utilise a man of many positions — essentially by placing him in important roles all over the pitch.

This ability to develop younger players and find solutions to issues others may deem insurmountable were key reasons why Liverpool’s decision-makers believe Slot is capable of replacing Jurgen Klopp.

Through conversations with those who know first-hand what it is like to play under Slot — some of whom preferred to remain anonymous, as they did not want to compromise their relationship with him — The Athletic has built a picture of how players benefit from his guidance and what those in the Liverpool squad are likely to discover in his first season at Anfield.

Geertruida’s story — and Slot’s role in his rise — is a good starting point, but it also needs context. Take his stutter, for example. It was a speech coach who helped Geertruida improve his delivery of words but Slot gave him the guidance and confidence to be a vocal force in the Feyenoord team that won the Dutch league title in 2023, although the player still declines to give interviews.

One of Slot’s greatest strengths is to allow specialists to work uninterrupted and use their knowledge to shape his decision-making. “He has an immense attention to detail, so he’ll lean on people, get good advice, but then always show that he’s in control with clear leadership,” Matt Wade, Feyenoord’s head of sporting strategy, tells The Athletic.

At the Rotterdam club, Slot empowered the player-care team to use a model which measured 85 data points across three categories: connection, autonomy and competency. From there, improvements were made to the original model, based around how players were feeling in themselves and about their performance levels, and Slot was always prepared to listen to the benefits. “The holistic development of players over time is so important to us because some are quicker than others,” Wade adds.

Yet if developing Geertruida’s leadership skills was a joint effort, maximising his performance levels on a matchday was largely down to Slot.

When others considered his versatility — Geertruida can play at right-back, in central defence or as a holding midfielder — a weakness, Slot used it to his advantage. There are multiple examples of him flicking between different roles in the Feyenoord back line or defensive midfield within one game.

Like Trent Alexander-Arnold at new employers Liverpool, Slot would occasionally ask him to start a match at right-back and then move into midfield; at other times, he would make up one half of a centre-back pairing. He gave Geertruida all the tools needed to be ready for the changes and he was tactically intelligent enough to take on the instruction.

As with just about every player who has worked under Slot, Geertruida knew that succeeding in his team would require periods of physical and emotional strain. The words “intense” and “demanding” are frequently used in conversations around Slot’s training methods, and both have already been felt by those at Liverpool during this pre-season.

He wants his players to be super-fit and aggressive, largely because he demands they win the ball back from the opposing team as quickly as possible, but also to be able to handle the freedom he gives to them when changing systems during a game and mixing up positions.

One of Slot’s targets is to confuse opposition analysts, so they are unable to recognise a set formation or structure. “I don’t prefer a system,” he has said. “But when we don’t have the ball, we have to be aggressive.”

That is part of why Liverpool were so keen to hire him — they felt he had a head start in the way he sets up his teams. Stylistically, it’s not far off predecessor Klopp’s approach but, once the season begins next weekend, Slot is sure the club’s supporters will notice the personalised twist.

Midfielder Harvey Elliott has already hinted at the changes. “It’s a very elegant, Dutch style, and more about being in possession now,” Elliott said during Liverpool’s recent pre-season tour in the United States.

Gernot Trauner, an Austria international centre-back who was Slot’s captain at Feyenoord, knows all about the demands, and predicts his old manager’s methods will work at Liverpool. “He’s a tremendous specialist and has incredible ideas in terms of ball possession, build-up play and positioning,” Trauner says. “There is no pass without an idea behind it. He tries to move the opponents and find open spaces.”

A degree of patience will be needed but Georginio Wijnaldum, the Netherlands international and former Liverpool midfielder, is sure Slot has the qualities to get it right, having experienced his sessions at the start of last season when he trained with Feyenoord for a week between leaving Paris Saint-Germain and joining Saudi Arabian club Al Ettifaq. “The training was at a very high level,” Wijnaldum says. “I can compare it with Klopp and Mourinho (who he played for at Roma in the 2022-23 season) and then I say Slot is at the same level.”

Wade speaks passionately about the head coach and how he helped add elite-level coaching to a strong backroom setup at Feyenoord, saying: “He’s not radically different, like a mad scientist or a Marcelo Bielsa-type, and he’s not going to completely flip the tables with what he does, but what he will do is be better than most.

“Even Liverpool’s squad will be amazed.”

Slot’s ideas around playing style and purpose have been carefully crafted over 11 years working as a coach in the Netherlands since retiring from playing, but haven’t changed too much in principle.

In his first role as under-14s coach at PEC Zwolle, his first and final club as a player, Slot asked the defenders to dribble out with the ball and then find new angles when they released it to a team-mate. He also looked for ways to get more bodies into midfield, so would often turn to the right-back or right-sided centre-back to push further upfield.

“At the time, the right-back at elite clubs would play high and wide but Arne was ahead of other coaches in his thinking,” said Max Leeflang, one of Slot’s former youth-team players, in an interview with The Athletic in May.

The dedication to player improvement was key after he went to Feyenoord in summer 2021, and Slot also had a brilliant support network to help, including the influential Ruben Peeters, who is now alongside him at Liverpool as head of physical performance.

Staff who remain at the Dutch club, including Wade and Stijn Vandenbroucke, their head of medical and performance, speak highly about Slot’s day-to-day approach and its transformative effect on Feyenoord’s players, two of whom — Mats Wieffer and Yankuba Minteh — will be playing for Brighton & Hove Albion this season. Minteh, the now 20-year-old winger who was there on a year’s loan from Newcastle United, was so grateful to Slot and his team for transforming him that he became uncharacteristically emotional when he had to say goodbye at the end of his stay.

There were bumps in the road as Minteh’s inexperience, coupled with his unpredictable style, left onlookers wondering whether he was going to dribble around the entire opposition back line and score or just fall over the ball. His performances really were that mixed at the start, but by May, he had become a reliable, all-round performer — scoring, creating and also contributing defensively through his speed and willingness to press.

Wieffer, a defensive midfielder, was also signed as a cheap (£600,000) young hopeful, from fellow Rotterdam side Excelsior, after an impressive run of games as they won promotion to the Eredivisie in 2022. This is the type of “project” Slot has enjoyed in years gone by; spotting talent, then working on ways to extract maximum performance from the player concerned.

Slot told Wieffer he would need time to adjust to his requirements but to believe in the process. Early steps were taken to improve both his stamina and controlled running and these had an immediate effect on performance. Slot worked closely on Wieffer’s positioning to help him cut out more opposition attacks and, by last year, he was one of the best ball-winners in the division.

That advice — coupled with Wieffer’s willingness to absorb instruction (he would often ask for even more information from his manager and loved the way Slot was so keen to monitor his individual process, with checkpoints along the way) — has now earned him a £25million move to the Premier League.

Mexican striker Santiago Gimenez, considered the next Feyenoord star likely to make such a transfer, is another example of how Slot’s patience paid off.

When Gimenez arrived from Cruz Azul in his homeland for €4million (£3.4m/$4.4m at current exchange rates) in summer 2022, Slot held him back, putting the now 23-year-old on a bespoke training plan for six months to allow him to acclimatise to European football gradually. Gimenez has gone on to score 38 Eredivisie goals in 63 appearances, leading to several top clubs showing interest in him. During that initial period after his arrival, Slot remained engaged with Gimenez to keep his spirits up.

Players say he can be patient and calm — but pushy when he needs to be.

“He knows when to tickle someone,” Trauner says.

Wade adds: “His consistency is so impressive when he’s with the players. He just has a really nice way of maintaining positive engagement.”

Slot sets himself daily reminders or messages to check in with people as a way of encouragement and interaction, and is involved in individualising players’ training programmes. Orkun Kokcu, who captained Feyenoord in their title-winning season, was another given a personalised training plan to improve his explosiveness over the first few yards in order to help him thrive in midfield.

The Turkey international installed a gym in his home and, for 30 days, he performed exercises designed to stimulate this specific development, with his manager asking for daily feedback on how he was doing.

Kokcu’s sale to Benfica of Portugal last summer sparked a different conundrum for Slot. With Feyenoord stripped of their star performer and leader, he had long conversations with members of the squad to reiterate their positions in an attempt to limit the damage of losing a prized asset. Trauner, then 31 years old, became the new captain, because of his experience and age, Geertruida was subtly pushed to a higher standing and goalkeeper Justin Bijlow, another Netherlands international, was reminded of his importance to the team.

Indeed, Bijlow serves as a case study in Slot’s man-management qualities.

Last season was unsettling for the keeper, with reports linking him with a move to the Premier League and injuries keeping him out of the team and threatening his place in the Netherlands’ squad for the European Championship. When Bijlow’s mood deteriorated as he recovered from a calf problem between February and April, Slot made it clear to him that he was his No 1 and said his place was not under threat.

To underline that point, Biljow also remained the spokesperson for the team at community events and when interacting with supporters. In the background, though, second-choice Timon Wellenreuther was ploughing through a toughening-up programme, to make sure he could step into the team if needed.

When both players were available for the Dutch Cup final in April, Slot found the right balance by keeping Wellenreuther in the team as a reward for his consistency during Bijlow’s absence. It wasn’t a slight on Bijlow — a player who respected Slot and enjoyed working under him — but more a strong decision based on what the coach felt was fair.

There are no guarantees that Slot will flourish at Liverpool, of course, and replicating the success of Klopp — who won almost every available trophy during his nine seasons as their manager — is probably unrealistic.

What his early weeks in the job have shown, however, is that Slot’s fortunes will not founder on a reluctance to try to improve the players at his disposal. Before pre-season even began, Slot studied video of Liverpool games and identified areas of weakness, and watched several of Klopp’s training sessions in an effort to understand how the players he was inheriting were used to operating.

Knowing that every player he wanted to keep would stay at the club — a stark contrast to the situation he lived with at Feyenoord, where the top players are consistently poached by bigger teams — Slot knew he could make headway, even with the interruption of key men being away at or after the Euros and Copa America.

“The longer a team plays together…if there’s a good head coach… normally you will see things that improve,” Slot says. If that’s the case, the length of his Liverpool tenure will ultimately determine how successful he is in England.

The players should enjoy the ride, too. Slot is passionate, intense and demanding, but he develops meaningful relationships with players, young and old.

“It’s his leadership perspective,” Wade says. “He’ll tell the team exactly where they’re heading and how they can achieve what he wants. Players like that.”

(Top photo: Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)