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Hello! It’s Monday, there’s a full week ahead.
Don’t let the Ben White in your office distract you. Coming up:
👋 What will Arne Slot bring to Liverpool?
😡 Klopp’s tiff with Salah — but forward expected to stay
🪄 Dark Arts fitting Arsenal like a glove
📈 Messi’s 50 goal-contributions challenge
Goodbye ‘Gegenpress’, hello ‘Topsport’
Jurgen Klopp’s appointment in 2015 made gegenpressing the buzzword at Liverpool. For nine years the club have fed on his brand of the counter-press; heavy-metal football, as it was dubbed for a while.
Very soon, gegenpressing will make way for Totalsport, the philosophy which brought Feyenoord the Dutch title last season. Change is coming to Anfield in the form of Arne Slot, the coach who Liverpool have chosen as Klopp’s replacement.
Terms for him were agreed with Feyenoord late on Friday. Here are the headlines from it:
- Liverpool sources say the fee is around £9.4m ($11.8m). Feyenoord claim it is worth more than £11m ($13.8m). You tend to get disparity in the numbers given by different sides of a negotiation but one way or another, Slot has not come cheap.
- He’ll bring members of his coaching staff from Feyenoord, including assistant Sipke Hulshoff and head of performance Ruben Peeters. Those seem like key additions in terms of continuity.
- We’re still to learn the precise details of Slot’s contract but Liverpool will commit to him long-term. As soon as he said openly that he wanted to leave Feyenoord last week, this was a fait accompli.
Is it a risk for Liverpool?
For all that Slot is highly respected in European circles, the Liverpool job will give him a global profile overnight. For the wider world, there’s much to learn about him.
In truth, it’s some leap for the 45-year-old Dutchman — not because he lacks suitable credentials, but because Feyenoord was his first high-level coaching job.
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He’s been trending upwards since he took a smaller Dutch side, AZ Alkmaar, to second place in the Eredivisie in 2019-20. That sort of over-performance always makes rival clubs sit up.
At Feyenoord, he was part of what became known as ‘Totalsport’ — a linear project where every cog in the machine from top to bottom was important but not indispensable. It’s how the post-Klopp era will look at Liverpool.
Tactically, he’s unashamedly influenced by Pep Guardiola. His style has similarities to that of Roberto De Zerbi at Brighton. The Athletic’s Adam Crafton got the chance to spend time with Slot a year ago. He’s written at length today about Slot’s charisma and ideas.
The conclusion I reached was that Slot won’t try to run a dictatorship at Anfield. It amused me that some at Feyenoord have never heard him raise his voice at the training ground.
Part of you still wonders if Bayer Leverkusen’s Xavi Alonso was the man Liverpool really craved. But their haste in nailing down terms with Feyenoord is a big vote of confidence in Slot.
Salah fuels fire… but is likely to stay
As Adam’s piece points out, no transfer fee under Slot at Feyenoord went higher than £9m ($11.2m). Feyenoord’s top wage is less than £40,000 ($50,000) a week. Needless to say, he’ll be dealing with much bigger numbers and much bigger egos at Anfield.
That was demonstrated by the extraordinary spat between Klopp and Mo Salah during Liverpool’s 2-2 draw with West Ham United on Saturday, a result which confirmed that their bid for the Premier League title is done.
Neither would say what the disagreement was about, and Klopp tried to brush it off afterwards. Salah then poured fuel on it by telling journalists there would be “fire if I speak”.
They’ve been good for each other, Klopp and Salah, and we’ve just broken the news that Liverpool expect the Egyptian to stay next season. Even so, this is what the end of days for a manager usually looks like. At least the documentary should be good…
White’s Dark Arts
How long before Premier League teams start employing defence-against-the-dark-arts teachers?
Tottenham Hotspur could have done with one yesterday as Ben White worked his magic. The Arsenal right-back is an unassuming type but he broke new ground in the dark arts field by trying to undo the glove of goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario as Spurs got ready to defend a corner.
Ben White was spotted trying to loosen Vicario’s gloves on a corner 👀 pic.twitter.com/UQN1mYR7MH
— Football on TNT Sports (@footballontnt) April 28, 2024
Spurs weren’t able to defend it and they conceded from another corner before half-time, leaving them 3-0 adrift at the break. What should have been the most difficult game of the run-in for Arsenal was a cakewalk in the first 45 minutes. Manchester City are getting pushed to the last kick.
As for Tottenham, they’re in the midst of a little culture war which was bound to break out at some stage: between those who love Ange Postecoglou’s abandon and those who want more pragmatism from him.
Arsenal have improved so much that it’s easy to forget the scepticism that surrounded Arteta for a while. Arsenal’s response to it was to double down on him. If Spurs have total faith in Ange-Ball, this is where they’ll need to do the same with Postecoglou.
Where do we stand?
Bayer Leverkusen and Inter Milan got their domestic titles wrapped up pronto but across much of Europe, it’s taken time for other leagues to shake down. The weekend saw lots of movement, though:
- Sheffield United have been relegated from the Premier League. They never got started.
- Leicester City are up from the Championship after Leeds United took a pasting at Queens Park Rangers on Friday. PSR trouble awaits but Leicester can worry about that later.
- Derby County saw off basket-case syndrome and returned to the Championship. Their manager, Paul Warne, is incredibly loveable.
- PSG are French champions. You’d never have guessed. Title number 12 for them.
Around The Athletic FC
🇺🇸 Lionel Messi’s breaking more MLS records so Jeff Rueter got to thinking: can Messi go beyond Carlos Vela’s unrivalled tally of 49 goal contributions in one US season?
🇮🇹 A bad week for AC Milan boss Stefano Pioli. Inter won the Serie A title in the derby, now he’s on the verge of the sack. He doesn’t read newspapers so his friends kindly sent him screengrabs of stories about Milan moving to court ex-Wolves coach Julen Lopetegui.
🏴 No Women’s Champions League for soon-to-be USWNT coach Emma Hayes. On the men’s front at Stamford Bridge, Champions League winner Thiago Silva is leaving.
Quiz Answer❓
Well done if you nailed Friday’s quiz question — which five players featured in the Premier League in both the 2007-08 and 2023-24 seasons? The answers: James Tomkins, Ashley Young, James Milner, Lucasz Fabianski and Jonny Evans. I forgot about Evans and got stuck on four. Facepalm.
(Top photo: Marcel ter Bals/DeFodi Images via Getty Images)
