nah it makes some people look like they’re dying
He’ll Slot right in
- Thread starter rurikbird
- Start date
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nah it makes some people look like they’re dying
Yeah, we should just stop trying to deep dive into the managers we're linked with and not give a fuck.
He's bald and Dutch. He'll flop. Next.
Like you said. Bald is beautiful.
Bald and tanned with a god like physique. A fine picture of health.
Dated May 2023
View: https://twitter.com/NickMiller79/status/1660587879377018882
In 2020-21, the season before Arne Slot became their manager, Feyenoord finished 29 points behind champions Ajax. They came fifth, the same number of points from the top of the table as they were from the bottom three, with the football under Dick Advocaat very uninspiring.
Two years later and the Rotterdam club are champions following Sunday’s win at home to Go Ahead Eagles, with two games to spare having spent virtually the whole season leading the Eredivisie. They last lost a league game in September, when they succumbed to a late goal in a 4-3 defeat at PSV Eindhoven.
Theirs has been a remarkable turnaround but, perhaps more than just results, it has been the way Feyenoord have won this title that will ensure Slot is in demand in the summer. High-energy, attacking, exciting football are the markers of his teams, but they win, too. And win a lot. In England alone, Tottenham, Leeds, Crystal Palace and a few others will be looking for a new head coach. Slot will likely be on most of those lists.
So what sort of coach might they be targeting? Will he be the latest Dutchman to come to England and make sense of a chaotic Premier League club? And who exactly is Arne Slot?
Arne Slot was slow.
As a player, Slot was a perfectly decent midfielder, with the bulk of his appearances coming in the Dutch second tier. He was technically very good, usually playing as an attacking midfielder or No 10 but, in the words of his former team-mate Edwin de Graaf, he was “not so fast”. Slot the coach once said that he would not have picked Slot the player.
This meant he had to rely on others around him to do a lot of the running. “I was a hard worker, he was the more technical player,” says De Graaf, who played alongside him at NAC Breda.
But his limitations as a player have helped him become the coach he is today because they enhanced his appreciation of how to make a team function as a cohesive unit. He was living proof that one player cannot do his job unless a colleague is doing theirs.
He was always going to be a coach, moving from the playing squad to the coaching staff at PEC Zwolle immediately after his retirement.
“Some players you can see are going to be coaches,” says De Graaf. “I also played with Alfred Schreuder (the former Ajax manager) and both him and Slot… nobody is surprised now they’re both coaches.
“He would ask the coach why they were using certain tactics. And in the dressing room, he would talk to the group about (for example) a way of pressing or defending. He would ask: ‘Why were we doing it this way? Would it be better to do it this way?’. He would make suggestions to his coaches.
“But he would do it in such a good way. He wouldn’t do it with an attitude: he would ask the coach: ‘What do you think about this?’. He would also very quickly see what the opponents were doing.”
“At that time, he was already looking in an analytical way,” Henk ten Cate, who brought Slot to Breda, told Voetbal International last year. “He was busy with tactics and asked questions at training.”
It is worth noting this was not when Slot was in the twilight of his career and was worrying about what would come next. Slot and Ten Cate worked together in 2002-03 when Slot was 24. He was one of those players who used his time on the pitch as an extended apprenticeship for when he moved to the touchline.
Slot hung up his boots in 2013 after playing for PEC Zwolle and immediately joined the club’s youth academy as a coach.
He then spent three years as a coach at Cambuur, who had just been promoted to the Eredivisie, after which he moved to AZ Alkmaar to be assistant to manager John van den Brom, still only 39 when he took that job. “We always searched for young, new coaches,” says Van den Brom. “He was an interesting coach because he wanted to develop.”
It was during these years Slot clarified what sort of football he wanted to play, helped by a series of formative relationships with other coaches.
At AZ, there was Van den Brom and Pascal Jansen (now AZ’s head coach), while at Cambuur he worked closely with Marcel Keizer, who would go on to manage Ajax and Sporting Lisbon. He also shared ideas with Pep Ljinders, now Jurgen Klopp’s assistant at Liverpool, and, with a group of other coaches, created a bespoke player database. At the time, the data resources available to them were far from adequate, so they built their own.
“What was nice for me is that he always thought in an attacking way,” says Van den Brom, before mentioning something that comes up time and again whenever you speak to someone about Slot.
“(His focus was) how can we make it clear to the players how we want to play? We were always searching for different ideas.”
It is fine for a coach to have ideas, but they have to be clearly transmitted to the players. Slot’s biggest quality and one he places significant emphasis on — he believes only 60 per cent is the idea and 40 per cent is how clearly you explain it — is his ability to communicate. His ideas are projected onto the pitch because his thoughts are clear and his words are carefully chosen.
So what are those ideas?
“They’re very attacking, very aggressive, with a lot of pressing,” says Martijn Krabbendam, a journalist for Voetbal International who has covered Slot’s Feyenoord. “High intensity, a lot of energy, and they can only do that if they’re very fit.
“He always wants to play attacking football, he always wants possession, he always wants a good set-up from the goalkeeper to find free space and free players in the midfield. It’s no secret he is crazy about Guardiola — he’s an example.”
Van den Brom adds: “We used a lot of videos of Manchester City and Bayern — he was crazy about Pep. How his teams create space, how they attack.”
Guardiola is the name that keeps coming up, but Slot also takes inspiration from a variety of other coaches: Marcelo Bielsa, Jorge Sampaoli, Jurgen Klopp, Luciano Spaletti, Mikel Arteta. All have their own ideas, so does he, but one thing they all have in common is their intensity.
Before he became Breda coach, De Graaf spent a week with Slot at Feyenoord, observing how he works. “Every session is with high intensity,” he says. “Every workout, passing drill, or five vs five — everything is with high intention and everything is with an idea. Every player knows exactly what he wants from them. He’s good at making clear why he’s doing certain exercises.
“He’s as honest as possible, so the players really like him.”
Slot believes his teams have to be intense because it essentially gives them two ways to win: if the quality of their play is lower than that of their opponents or they are having an off day, they can win by outrunning and outworking whoever they are playing.
There is also a recognition of, and mitigation against, the fitness concerns that come with such an intense style of not just playing, but training. He works closely with his data and fitness teams: when they tell him a player’s numbers are dropping or they are in the ‘red zone’, he will ease off.
Transitions are quick and passing is certain. Slot likes to work with younger players who are keen to learn. “If you have a young group, then, as a trainer, you can take the boys through videos in your desired playing style,” he said a few years ago.
For example, when Tyrell Malacia left last summer for Manchester United, he chose to replace him at left-back with the 20-year-old youth team product Quilindschy Hartman. When he needed a central midfielder, he took 22-year-old Mats Wieffer from Excelsior Rotterdam in the Dutch second tier. Both were subsequently called up to the Dutch national team. Most of the key players this season are 24 and under — there are only three outfielders in the squad who are older than 25.
His focus is on the collective. He believes the team makes the individual look good.
Most of all, the priority is on entertaining football. The goal is not to win at any cost, but to provide exciting, as well as winning, football. Voetbal International wrote: “He believes that special football is more remembered than a prize with boring, uninspiring football.”
Players seem to adore Slot.
Oussama Idrissi, who has been a key part of Slot’s teams at both AZ and Feyenoord, was asked recently by the Dutch newspaper AD where Slot ranks in the coaches he has played under. “For me, he’s the best,” said the Moroccan winger. “He can develop players and make teams play fun football.”
When it was pointed out that he has also played under Julen Lopetegui, Herve Renard and a guy called Erik ten Hag, Idrissi reiterated: “Slot was the best.”
You will not struggle to find other players with similarly effusive things to say about him. “He is one of the best managers I’ve ever seen,” said Alireza Jahanbakhsh, the Iranian forward currently playing under Slot at Feyenoord. “In football terms, even the best. At the moment, he is the best in the Netherlands.”
Reiss Nelson spent last season on loan at Feyenoord, becoming a regular in the second half of the campaign. “Arne Slot is a great manager,” he told the Colney Carpool podcast. “He really got me into my rhythm. He gave me a lot of opportunities to play and I excelled.”
“It’s a shame,” said Myron Boadu, shortly after Slot left AZ. “Arne is a fantastic person and a fantastic trainer who really let us play football in the style of Manchester City or Barcelona in the good times.”
“He’s as honest as possible, so the players really like him,” says De Graaf.
Slot has not gained the backing of these players just by being straightforward, though. The players like him because they win under him. But, perhaps more than that, they follow him because most of the things he tells them come true.
“Before the game against Marseille (in the Europa Conference League) last season, during training he told his midfielders to play long balls out to the wingers, over the top,” explains Krabbendam. “(Orkun) Kokcu, the midfielder, was so tired of it — he asked: ‘Why do we have to keep playing these long balls?’. Slot said he would explain later.
“In 20 minutes, Feyenoord were up 2-0 and both goals came from long balls behind the Marseille defence. He knew that was a weakness of Marseille. If you speak to the Feyenoord players — and it doesn’t matter which players — they will tell you that whatever this coach says, it happens. It’s remarkable. They have blind confidence in him because what he says comes true.”
He is no hardliner or a particular disciplinarian. He emphasises positivity. When his video analysts put selections of clips together for players to watch, allowing them to scrutinise their own performances, he asks that most of them are positive. In particular, the last one is always positive so the players leave their session feeling good about themselves.
Arguably, the player who has most benefitted from Slot’s tenure at Feyenoord has been Kokcu, who came through the ranks at Feyenoord.
Previously regarded as a talented but slightly insubstantial No 10, Kokcu came back from Euro 2020 with Turkey to find things had changed. No longer would he be able to create and let his team-mates do his running for him.
After Slot’s first competitive game in charge, a Europa Conference League game against Kosovan side SF Drita, the new coach sat down next to Kokcu on the flight home and explained that he needed more from him. More running, more pressing, more chasing back. And it worked.
Even after only a few weeks of working together, Slot convinced Kokcu that he had to significantly improve physically.
Kokcu is close friends with Malacia (the two came through the Feyenoord youth team together) and had observed the defender’s physical development since he started working with a physical trainer in Rotterdam. Kokcu went to the same trainer and, within weeks, had become the worker Slot demanded.
“If you see him now, he’s a modern midfield player,” says Krabbendam.
To illustrate this point, take a look at this touch chart for Kokcu in Feyenoord’s Europa League quarter-final first-leg victory over Roma in April. The concentration is in the middle, but there are very few areas of the pitch he did not cover.
The disruption to football caused by COVID-19 produced many ‘what ifs’, but there cannot be many bigger than for Slot.
In his first season as AZ head coach, they had already beaten Feyenoord and PSV 3-0 and 4-0 away respectively before a 2-0 win at Ajax in March 2020 put them level on points at the top of the Eredivisie with the Amsterdam giants. There were still nine games remaining but AZ had the momentum.
The following week, the season was suspended as the pandemic took hold. The campaign was ultimately cancelled completely in April and the chance to win just the third title in AZ’s history was scuppered.
They started the following season in similar style, going undefeated until the start of December. Then it all ended quite abruptly.
Feyenoord announced that veteran manager Advocaat would be leaving at the end of that campaign. Slot was the obvious replacement but, a few days later, the AZ board got wind of talks between Slot and the Rotterdam club and promptly sacked him. He was clearly ready for a step up, but it was far from the way he wanted to leave the club.
“You always want to leave by the front door,” says Van den Brom. “So it wasn’t good for Arne and it wasn’t good for the club.”
He spent the intervening months playing golf and planning for the move.
And boy did those plans work. The improvement in Feyenoord’s football — and results — was almost instant, moving from a distant fifth to a closer third, scoring more goals, conceding fewer and winning more games. They also reached the Europa Conference League final, where they lost to Roma. Slot won the Rinus Michels award for best coach in the Eredivisie.
If you want to quantify Feyenoord’s improvement under Slot, consider FiveThirtyEight’s Soccer Power Index (above), which uses underlying metrics to calculate a team’s attacking and defensive strength. Slot’s arrival at the club coincided with a steady rise up the rankings. They are now on a score of 76.6, the 21st-highest in world football. Not bad for an Eredivisie club.
But here is perhaps the most compelling evidence that Slot has something.
In the summer after that first season, his Feyenoord team was gutted. Top-scorer Luis Sinisterra was sold to Leeds. Malacia went to United. Marcos Senesi to Bournemouth. Nelson’s loan spell ended and he returned to Arsenal. Midfielder Fredrik Aursnes joined Benfica. Guus Til (on loan at Feyenoord from Spartak Moscow) moved to PSV. All four players who had chalked up double-figure goal tallies the previous season had left.
Of the team that started that Conference League final under a year ago, only four remain at the club.
And yet, Feyenoord improved. Kokcu and a few others stayed, but in came Santiago Gimenez, who has gone on to be their top scorer. Slovakian defender David Hancko arrived from Sparta Prague and excelled. Idrissi, who starred for Slot at AZ, was rescued from Sevilla on loan. Wieffer and Hartman were essentially plucked from nowhere and are now full internationals.
They took top spot in the Eredvisie just before the World Cup break and have not relinquished it since.
Now they are champions. Despite being one of the ‘big three’ Dutch clubs, alongside Ajax and PSV, Feyenoord’s recent trophy count is relatively modest. Before this season, they had only won the Eredivisie once since the turn of the century, so this success shouldn’t be underestimated.
What next for Arne Slot?
That has yet to be decided, but any club that wants a young, forward-thinking coach who prioritises fast, intense, attacking football would be foolish not to take a look.
View: https://twitter.com/NickMiller79/status/1660587879377018882
In 2020-21, the season before Arne Slot became their manager, Feyenoord finished 29 points behind champions Ajax. They came fifth, the same number of points from the top of the table as they were from the bottom three, with the football under Dick Advocaat very uninspiring.
Two years later and the Rotterdam club are champions following Sunday’s win at home to Go Ahead Eagles, with two games to spare having spent virtually the whole season leading the Eredivisie. They last lost a league game in September, when they succumbed to a late goal in a 4-3 defeat at PSV Eindhoven.
Theirs has been a remarkable turnaround but, perhaps more than just results, it has been the way Feyenoord have won this title that will ensure Slot is in demand in the summer. High-energy, attacking, exciting football are the markers of his teams, but they win, too. And win a lot. In England alone, Tottenham, Leeds, Crystal Palace and a few others will be looking for a new head coach. Slot will likely be on most of those lists.
So what sort of coach might they be targeting? Will he be the latest Dutchman to come to England and make sense of a chaotic Premier League club? And who exactly is Arne Slot?
Arne Slot was slow.
As a player, Slot was a perfectly decent midfielder, with the bulk of his appearances coming in the Dutch second tier. He was technically very good, usually playing as an attacking midfielder or No 10 but, in the words of his former team-mate Edwin de Graaf, he was “not so fast”. Slot the coach once said that he would not have picked Slot the player.
This meant he had to rely on others around him to do a lot of the running. “I was a hard worker, he was the more technical player,” says De Graaf, who played alongside him at NAC Breda.
But his limitations as a player have helped him become the coach he is today because they enhanced his appreciation of how to make a team function as a cohesive unit. He was living proof that one player cannot do his job unless a colleague is doing theirs.
He was always going to be a coach, moving from the playing squad to the coaching staff at PEC Zwolle immediately after his retirement.
“Some players you can see are going to be coaches,” says De Graaf. “I also played with Alfred Schreuder (the former Ajax manager) and both him and Slot… nobody is surprised now they’re both coaches.
“He would ask the coach why they were using certain tactics. And in the dressing room, he would talk to the group about (for example) a way of pressing or defending. He would ask: ‘Why were we doing it this way? Would it be better to do it this way?’. He would make suggestions to his coaches.
“But he would do it in such a good way. He wouldn’t do it with an attitude: he would ask the coach: ‘What do you think about this?’. He would also very quickly see what the opponents were doing.”
“At that time, he was already looking in an analytical way,” Henk ten Cate, who brought Slot to Breda, told Voetbal International last year. “He was busy with tactics and asked questions at training.”
It is worth noting this was not when Slot was in the twilight of his career and was worrying about what would come next. Slot and Ten Cate worked together in 2002-03 when Slot was 24. He was one of those players who used his time on the pitch as an extended apprenticeship for when he moved to the touchline.
Slot hung up his boots in 2013 after playing for PEC Zwolle and immediately joined the club’s youth academy as a coach.
He then spent three years as a coach at Cambuur, who had just been promoted to the Eredivisie, after which he moved to AZ Alkmaar to be assistant to manager John van den Brom, still only 39 when he took that job. “We always searched for young, new coaches,” says Van den Brom. “He was an interesting coach because he wanted to develop.”
It was during these years Slot clarified what sort of football he wanted to play, helped by a series of formative relationships with other coaches.
At AZ, there was Van den Brom and Pascal Jansen (now AZ’s head coach), while at Cambuur he worked closely with Marcel Keizer, who would go on to manage Ajax and Sporting Lisbon. He also shared ideas with Pep Ljinders, now Jurgen Klopp’s assistant at Liverpool, and, with a group of other coaches, created a bespoke player database. At the time, the data resources available to them were far from adequate, so they built their own.
“What was nice for me is that he always thought in an attacking way,” says Van den Brom, before mentioning something that comes up time and again whenever you speak to someone about Slot.
“(His focus was) how can we make it clear to the players how we want to play? We were always searching for different ideas.”
It is fine for a coach to have ideas, but they have to be clearly transmitted to the players. Slot’s biggest quality and one he places significant emphasis on — he believes only 60 per cent is the idea and 40 per cent is how clearly you explain it — is his ability to communicate. His ideas are projected onto the pitch because his thoughts are clear and his words are carefully chosen.
So what are those ideas?
“They’re very attacking, very aggressive, with a lot of pressing,” says Martijn Krabbendam, a journalist for Voetbal International who has covered Slot’s Feyenoord. “High intensity, a lot of energy, and they can only do that if they’re very fit.
“He always wants to play attacking football, he always wants possession, he always wants a good set-up from the goalkeeper to find free space and free players in the midfield. It’s no secret he is crazy about Guardiola — he’s an example.”
Van den Brom adds: “We used a lot of videos of Manchester City and Bayern — he was crazy about Pep. How his teams create space, how they attack.”
Guardiola is the name that keeps coming up, but Slot also takes inspiration from a variety of other coaches: Marcelo Bielsa, Jorge Sampaoli, Jurgen Klopp, Luciano Spaletti, Mikel Arteta. All have their own ideas, so does he, but one thing they all have in common is their intensity.
Before he became Breda coach, De Graaf spent a week with Slot at Feyenoord, observing how he works. “Every session is with high intensity,” he says. “Every workout, passing drill, or five vs five — everything is with high intention and everything is with an idea. Every player knows exactly what he wants from them. He’s good at making clear why he’s doing certain exercises.
“He’s as honest as possible, so the players really like him.”
Slot believes his teams have to be intense because it essentially gives them two ways to win: if the quality of their play is lower than that of their opponents or they are having an off day, they can win by outrunning and outworking whoever they are playing.
There is also a recognition of, and mitigation against, the fitness concerns that come with such an intense style of not just playing, but training. He works closely with his data and fitness teams: when they tell him a player’s numbers are dropping or they are in the ‘red zone’, he will ease off.
Transitions are quick and passing is certain. Slot likes to work with younger players who are keen to learn. “If you have a young group, then, as a trainer, you can take the boys through videos in your desired playing style,” he said a few years ago.
For example, when Tyrell Malacia left last summer for Manchester United, he chose to replace him at left-back with the 20-year-old youth team product Quilindschy Hartman. When he needed a central midfielder, he took 22-year-old Mats Wieffer from Excelsior Rotterdam in the Dutch second tier. Both were subsequently called up to the Dutch national team. Most of the key players this season are 24 and under — there are only three outfielders in the squad who are older than 25.
His focus is on the collective. He believes the team makes the individual look good.
Most of all, the priority is on entertaining football. The goal is not to win at any cost, but to provide exciting, as well as winning, football. Voetbal International wrote: “He believes that special football is more remembered than a prize with boring, uninspiring football.”
Players seem to adore Slot.
Oussama Idrissi, who has been a key part of Slot’s teams at both AZ and Feyenoord, was asked recently by the Dutch newspaper AD where Slot ranks in the coaches he has played under. “For me, he’s the best,” said the Moroccan winger. “He can develop players and make teams play fun football.”
When it was pointed out that he has also played under Julen Lopetegui, Herve Renard and a guy called Erik ten Hag, Idrissi reiterated: “Slot was the best.”
You will not struggle to find other players with similarly effusive things to say about him. “He is one of the best managers I’ve ever seen,” said Alireza Jahanbakhsh, the Iranian forward currently playing under Slot at Feyenoord. “In football terms, even the best. At the moment, he is the best in the Netherlands.”
Reiss Nelson spent last season on loan at Feyenoord, becoming a regular in the second half of the campaign. “Arne Slot is a great manager,” he told the Colney Carpool podcast. “He really got me into my rhythm. He gave me a lot of opportunities to play and I excelled.”
“It’s a shame,” said Myron Boadu, shortly after Slot left AZ. “Arne is a fantastic person and a fantastic trainer who really let us play football in the style of Manchester City or Barcelona in the good times.”
“He’s as honest as possible, so the players really like him,” says De Graaf.
Slot has not gained the backing of these players just by being straightforward, though. The players like him because they win under him. But, perhaps more than that, they follow him because most of the things he tells them come true.
“Before the game against Marseille (in the Europa Conference League) last season, during training he told his midfielders to play long balls out to the wingers, over the top,” explains Krabbendam. “(Orkun) Kokcu, the midfielder, was so tired of it — he asked: ‘Why do we have to keep playing these long balls?’. Slot said he would explain later.
“In 20 minutes, Feyenoord were up 2-0 and both goals came from long balls behind the Marseille defence. He knew that was a weakness of Marseille. If you speak to the Feyenoord players — and it doesn’t matter which players — they will tell you that whatever this coach says, it happens. It’s remarkable. They have blind confidence in him because what he says comes true.”
He is no hardliner or a particular disciplinarian. He emphasises positivity. When his video analysts put selections of clips together for players to watch, allowing them to scrutinise their own performances, he asks that most of them are positive. In particular, the last one is always positive so the players leave their session feeling good about themselves.
Arguably, the player who has most benefitted from Slot’s tenure at Feyenoord has been Kokcu, who came through the ranks at Feyenoord.
Previously regarded as a talented but slightly insubstantial No 10, Kokcu came back from Euro 2020 with Turkey to find things had changed. No longer would he be able to create and let his team-mates do his running for him.
After Slot’s first competitive game in charge, a Europa Conference League game against Kosovan side SF Drita, the new coach sat down next to Kokcu on the flight home and explained that he needed more from him. More running, more pressing, more chasing back. And it worked.
Even after only a few weeks of working together, Slot convinced Kokcu that he had to significantly improve physically.
Kokcu is close friends with Malacia (the two came through the Feyenoord youth team together) and had observed the defender’s physical development since he started working with a physical trainer in Rotterdam. Kokcu went to the same trainer and, within weeks, had become the worker Slot demanded.
“If you see him now, he’s a modern midfield player,” says Krabbendam.
To illustrate this point, take a look at this touch chart for Kokcu in Feyenoord’s Europa League quarter-final first-leg victory over Roma in April. The concentration is in the middle, but there are very few areas of the pitch he did not cover.
The disruption to football caused by COVID-19 produced many ‘what ifs’, but there cannot be many bigger than for Slot.
In his first season as AZ head coach, they had already beaten Feyenoord and PSV 3-0 and 4-0 away respectively before a 2-0 win at Ajax in March 2020 put them level on points at the top of the Eredivisie with the Amsterdam giants. There were still nine games remaining but AZ had the momentum.
The following week, the season was suspended as the pandemic took hold. The campaign was ultimately cancelled completely in April and the chance to win just the third title in AZ’s history was scuppered.
They started the following season in similar style, going undefeated until the start of December. Then it all ended quite abruptly.
Feyenoord announced that veteran manager Advocaat would be leaving at the end of that campaign. Slot was the obvious replacement but, a few days later, the AZ board got wind of talks between Slot and the Rotterdam club and promptly sacked him. He was clearly ready for a step up, but it was far from the way he wanted to leave the club.
“You always want to leave by the front door,” says Van den Brom. “So it wasn’t good for Arne and it wasn’t good for the club.”
He spent the intervening months playing golf and planning for the move.
And boy did those plans work. The improvement in Feyenoord’s football — and results — was almost instant, moving from a distant fifth to a closer third, scoring more goals, conceding fewer and winning more games. They also reached the Europa Conference League final, where they lost to Roma. Slot won the Rinus Michels award for best coach in the Eredivisie.
If you want to quantify Feyenoord’s improvement under Slot, consider FiveThirtyEight’s Soccer Power Index (above), which uses underlying metrics to calculate a team’s attacking and defensive strength. Slot’s arrival at the club coincided with a steady rise up the rankings. They are now on a score of 76.6, the 21st-highest in world football. Not bad for an Eredivisie club.
But here is perhaps the most compelling evidence that Slot has something.
In the summer after that first season, his Feyenoord team was gutted. Top-scorer Luis Sinisterra was sold to Leeds. Malacia went to United. Marcos Senesi to Bournemouth. Nelson’s loan spell ended and he returned to Arsenal. Midfielder Fredrik Aursnes joined Benfica. Guus Til (on loan at Feyenoord from Spartak Moscow) moved to PSV. All four players who had chalked up double-figure goal tallies the previous season had left.
Of the team that started that Conference League final under a year ago, only four remain at the club.
And yet, Feyenoord improved. Kokcu and a few others stayed, but in came Santiago Gimenez, who has gone on to be their top scorer. Slovakian defender David Hancko arrived from Sparta Prague and excelled. Idrissi, who starred for Slot at AZ, was rescued from Sevilla on loan. Wieffer and Hartman were essentially plucked from nowhere and are now full internationals.
They took top spot in the Eredvisie just before the World Cup break and have not relinquished it since.
Now they are champions. Despite being one of the ‘big three’ Dutch clubs, alongside Ajax and PSV, Feyenoord’s recent trophy count is relatively modest. Before this season, they had only won the Eredivisie once since the turn of the century, so this success shouldn’t be underestimated.
What next for Arne Slot?
That has yet to be decided, but any club that wants a young, forward-thinking coach who prioritises fast, intense, attacking football would be foolish not to take a look.
Your unborn great granddaughter could manage that.
Likes his full backs deep
View: https://twitter.com/CoachesVoice/status/1782437240930545935
At AZ, Slot’s double pivot supported underneath the main attacking quartet of number 10, two wide attackers and centre-forward. The full-backs started deep and wide, to eventually support with delayed runs as the front four narrowed. In the 2019/20 Eredivisie season, full-backs Jonas Svensson and Owen Wijndal provided 44 per cent of the team’s crosses.
www.leftbackfootball.com
AZ Alkmaar normally build-up in a 2+1/2+2/2+3 formation as the centre-backs seek to work passing angles to Teun Koopmeiners in the six space. The AZ build-up shape is very fluid as the fullbacks will remain deeper, especially against sides with deep blocks as AZ push up to the halfway-line. Owen Wijndal who has a background as a midfielder will sometimes remain deeper to form a three-chain or a 3+2 formation as he will dribble into the centre to attract markers and create space. Jonas Svensson, the right-back will also do the same as he will drive the ball into the centre to work passing combinations with a deeper midfielder or centre-backs to progress play. Ron Vlaar will also drive forward leaving his defensive partner as the deepest-lying player to work passing angles into players in the pockets.
View: https://twitter.com/ThanosCFC/status/1779420185171992731
View: https://twitter.com/CoachesVoice/status/1782437240930545935
At AZ, Slot’s double pivot supported underneath the main attacking quartet of number 10, two wide attackers and centre-forward. The full-backs started deep and wide, to eventually support with delayed runs as the front four narrowed. In the 2019/20 Eredivisie season, full-backs Jonas Svensson and Owen Wijndal provided 44 per cent of the team’s crosses.
Left Back Football
AZ Alkmaar Technical Director, Max Huiberts made the astute decision to hire a young manager from Cambuur as an assistant to John Van den Brom. Arne Slot had the opportunity to take training sessions and give presentations to AZ Alkmaar’s playing staff so that when he eventually got the opportunity
www.leftbackfootball.com
AZ Alkmaar normally build-up in a 2+1/2+2/2+3 formation as the centre-backs seek to work passing angles to Teun Koopmeiners in the six space. The AZ build-up shape is very fluid as the fullbacks will remain deeper, especially against sides with deep blocks as AZ push up to the halfway-line. Owen Wijndal who has a background as a midfielder will sometimes remain deeper to form a three-chain or a 3+2 formation as he will dribble into the centre to attract markers and create space. Jonas Svensson, the right-back will also do the same as he will drive the ball into the centre to work passing combinations with a deeper midfielder or centre-backs to progress play. Ron Vlaar will also drive forward leaving his defensive partner as the deepest-lying player to work passing angles into players in the pockets.
View: https://twitter.com/ThanosCFC/status/1779420185171992731
Glad you agree! Bald and idolises Pep.
The dogs of liverpool and their collective ani thank you.
TRENTS STAYING AT RIGHT BACK LADS
Wonder if that was the only requirement for the new manager?
"Will you play Trent in midfield? "
"Yes, i think he has all the attributes to be a huge success and can dictate play"
"thank you for your time. IF you could sign out at the front desk"
"Will you play Trent in midfield? "
"Yes, i think he has all the attributes to be a huge success and can dictate play"
"thank you for your time. IF you could sign out at the front desk"
I agree, but I'm not going to look for evidence that they're good in whatever starter league they are in. Id fucking hope they've got some history of success at that level if they are going to manage a massive club.
Anyone linked to us should be an established manager, with ideally a wealth of silverware under their belt. If they don't do that then they need to be braced for the sacrificial pyre
Thank you as always, @King Binny. A few things stand out:
1. The Lijnders connection - seems like Slot is very much from the same cohort of progressive young Dutch managers sharing similar philosophy of football as our Pep, but more seasoned as a head coach. If we were thinking about leaving Lijnders in charge, Slot could be seen as a safer bet, while providing continuity of sorts.
2. Emphasis on young players - given how ridiculously young his current squad is, I don’t think some of the losses against more seasoned teams in Europe can be held against him. From what I’ve seen of Feyenoord in Europe this season, they seem to approach the games in the right way - aggressive and organized - and wins and losses there are just a part of the process of maturation and development.
3. The sacking by AZ needs more context: why would the board sack a manager going unbeaten just because he was negotiating with another club for the following season? Did Slot do something unethical? Were the board just assholes? Something doesn’t add up.
Overall, his profile seems like a good fit for a team like Tottenham last season, similar to Ange - attacking football, developing young players, good personality by all accounts, but no experience in the Premier League or of working with superstars. Edwards and Hughes would have to be really convinced he is the right guy if they are going to take this gamble.
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He looks like a serial killer.
You wouldn’t want to be in a room with him alone.
You wouldn’t want to be in a room with him alone.
Momo would. Hed oil that fucker up.
Or Skully.
It reads like they are making out he went way out of his way to see a rapper, the mad bastard ... its less than an hour's drive
Tuchel snatches kids, pass it on.
I think JJ could help recommending a guy.
i think that guy only works on steam powered machines
I really do not want a Dutch manager.
Their outspoken and direct nature will rub players and fans up the wrong way imo.
Their outspoken and direct nature will rub players and fans up the wrong way imo.
Same here - also who is this fucking Slot guy ? - what the fuck are we doing as a club ? We should be getting that guy Amorim signed up even now - what are we doing ?
Right now - fuck this process - I actually want something different other than 4-3-3 variations. I want us to play the Amorim formation and see how we do.
