When new Liverpool boss Arne Slot isn’t ordering his players to put the boot into each other he’s shooting from the lip. The Dutchman has built a reputation for playing the beautiful game during an eight-year coaching career that has taken him from lower league SC Cambuur to Anfield via AZ Alkmaar and Feyenoord. But like predecessor Jurgen Klopp , the 45-year-old learned during his unremarkable playing days that sometimes you need to get tough.
If Slot feels like his players have allowed their standards to drop in training he will tell one of them to give the rest a kicking in a bid to shake them up. And during his time in charge of Feyenoord, he triggered both Jose Mourinho and Diego Simeone by questioning their methods. Transfer news LIVE: Man Utd make Ten Hag sack u-turn, £55m Chelsea deal confirmed Barcelona offer to Thiago casts new light on decision to leave Liverpool PEC Zwolle hardman Bram van Polen has described how Slot would tell him to fly into tackles in training when the Dutchman became an assistant coach at the club after spending his last four seasons there as a player.
Van Polen said: “Slot puts a lot of energy in all his training sessions. He is very demanding and wants things practiced in perfection. But oh dear, if he thought at the end of the week that the players had not given everything in training.
.. “If the squad had been lacking sharpness, he would come up to me a day before the game and say ‘can you drive everyone over the edge in our las.
