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As ever, hasty opinions form, often conditioned by framing.

On the one hand, Slot is one of only two Feyenoord managers to win the title this century and he became the first coach to take the club beyond the group stage in a European competition since 2015, reaching the inaugural final of the Europa Conference League in 2022 and the Europa League quarter-finals last season in parallel to claiming the domestic championship.

He won that title despite retaining only four players from his starting line-up in that Conference League final.



They may question if Liverpool are taking an almighty gamble on a man who has only five seasons of experience as a head coach, all of which have been in the Netherlands, outside of European football’s elite, and one of which was in his homeland’s second division.

Slot has coached only one campaign in the group stage of the Champions League, winning two of six games against Atletico Madrid, Lazio and Celtic, and losing the rest to fail to progress into the knockout phase.

In almost three full seasons as Feyenoord manager, Slot has never lost consecutive league games, which is incredibly impressive, but means there is no evidence-base for how he may handle the longer periods of difficulty which are more likely in the fiercely-competitive Premier League, even with a club among its elite.

At Feyenoord, no player recruited for Slot exceeded the €9million initial fee spent on Japanese striker Ayase Ueda from Belgian side Cercle Bruges last summer, and the highest player wage is believed to be around €40,000 a week.

He appeared genuinely touched when I told him how, during the previous evening, I had met a Feyenoord fan who credited Slot for not only winning more points than Ajax, Amsterdam’s 36-time Dutch champions, but allowing that supporter to believe for the first time that his team played prettier football than their arch-rivals, a club so closely connected with the ‘total football’ concept.

When he discussed what he seeks from his players, Slot said he initially “emphasised players who are not maybe the best in the world, but who brought energy to the team and also to the stadium”.

Under Liverpool’s sporting-director model, albeit with Edwards sitting at the top, the club want the person who’ll be their head coach, not manager, next season to co-exist within this framework, and at Feyenoord, Slot has demonstrated a willingness to do that.

The most successful clubs these days have departments across the board who communicate and support one another, rather than operating as separate siloed operations.

In the case of recruitment, therefore, we know Liverpool leaned heavily on their data and research analysts during Edwards’ reign as sporting director, with the data operation identifying the potential of then Roma forward Salah to excel in the Premier League, even after a difficult period at Chelsea earlier in his career.

Hulshoff, right, is Slot’s top assistant and also works with Ronald Koeman and the Dutch national team (Olaf Kraak/ANP/AFP via Getty Images)

As Klopp grew more successful and powerful at Liverpool, his personal grip on recruitment became stronger, but while the club will welcome input from a head coach, they would like to simplify the role and allow that person to concentrate on the demanding bread and butter of developing players, preparing a team and selecting the line-up for the next match.

None of which means recruitment teams and a head coach should be in conflict.

The plan went so smoothly that, after the tournament, he started 20 of Feyenoord’s final 21 Eredivisie and Europa League matches, scoring in 12 of them and finishing as their 20-goal top scorer.

Klopp has at times shown patience of his own, most notably taking time to bed Fabinho and Andy Robertson into his Liverpool team after they were signed.

Slot was sufficiently secure in his own skin that he allowed the club to bring in a sports psychologist, Dan Abrahams, to help the players overcome the mental block that had prevented Feyenoord winning away to fierce rivals Ajax since 2005.
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