Arne Slot making hometown proud as Feyenoord boss prepares to switch Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool | Soccer Information

Arne Slot was all smiles once more on the weekend after one other win – this time in opposition to PEC Zwolle, the membership with which he began and ended his enjoying profession.

Slot is used to profitable. The truth is, he is by no means misplaced two league video games in a row at Feyenoord. The staff stay on the right track to safe extra Eredivisie factors this season than they did of their title-winning season 12 months in the past.

Now he will swap Rotterdam for Liverpool. Swap the Nieuwe Mass for the Mersey. Swap one football-crazy river metropolis for an additional.

The deal is not official but – nevertheless it’s accomplished.

Close to the docks in Rotterdam, simply down the highway from De Kuip – Feyenoord’s stadium – is a complicated a part of town with an apt title. ‘KOP Van Zuid’ has residences utilized by Feyenoord gamers and workers.

However Arne Slot prefers a quieter life every time he will get a break from his each day soccer routine.

He moved to Zwolle, round a 90-minute drive from Rotterdam, when he performed there. It stays his dwelling metropolis. For now.

It is a fantastic place, filled with ornate structure. Sassenpoort – the previous metropolis gate – has a cannon guarding it. Similar to the one on the Arsenal badge. It is a common reminder for Slot, whose home is a couple of yards away, of the challenges forward.

However Arsenal, Manchester Metropolis et al are a world away from the place it began.

“Go to Bergentheim, my hometown,” Arne Slot urged me after his information convention final Thursday. “It is a good place.”

So I did. I used to be warmly welcomed by Jan Ophof, who continues to be concerned at VV Bergentheim, Slot’s first membership.

Younger Arne was particular even then, says Ophof, who was his first coach. At 9 years previous, Slot was promoted to the U12s – and already displaying indicators of being a coach.

“As somewhat boy, he was sensible,” Ophof remembers. “And he was technical, excellent”, he provides, proudly displaying me a photograph of the 2 of them collectively virtually 40 years in the past.

“He made different gamers higher. At 9 years previous, he was a pacesetter on the sector.”

Ophof added: “He would come as much as me and say, ‘coach, can we do that? Can we try this?’

“He was very clever for his age. He was not a fast participant for a No 10 however he had imaginative and prescient. He’s very clever.”

Slot’s father, Arend, was a headteacher and part-time coach. He nonetheless lives in Bergentheim and likewise stays concerned with the membership.

“His father was footballer, too. A superb household and Arne was boy,” says Ophof.

Slot usually returns to the membership to educate children and lift funds, and Ophof is pleased with what he calls his “three per cent” position in Slot’s rise to prominence.

“I am proud,” he says. “We’re a small city of solely 3,500 individuals. Now one in every of us goes to be coach of one of many greatest golf equipment on the planet.”

Ophof provides that Slot has a very totally different persona to his Dutch counterpart and present Manchester United supervisor, Erik ten Hag.

“He makes gamers good,” explains Ophof. “He makes them higher by making them completely happy.

“It is not like [Cristiano] Ronaldo with Ten Hag,” he suggests. “With Mohamed Salah, perhaps, he’ll say, ‘Salah, come right here, let’s speak’.

“They’ll speak it out for 2 hours. He’ll make Salah essential for the staff.

“The gamers love him. His arguments are good. Different trainers have arguments and also you suppose, ‘oh, that is not good’. However with Arne it is all the time good. He explains every thing properly. He is excellent.”

At De Kuip, the media centre has a head coach corridor of fame. Slot and all his predecessors are pictured – Ruud Gullit, Giovanni van Bronckhorst, Jaap Stam, Dick Advocaat and Ronald Koeman amongst them.

However Feyenoord followers I spoke to charge Slot highest of all of them – and native journalists agree.

What’s extra, they again him to reach the Premier League the place different Dutch managers have failed.

“I’m fairly hopeful,” says De Telegraaf’s Marcel van der Kraan. “I’ve seen different managers go to England and a few of them I may type of forecast that it’s going to not work, since you can’t be blind to the English tradition.

“However I solely have to have a look at this man and the best way he presents himself, all the time with a smile. He’s a really optimistic man, an important communicator within the dressing room.

“The language within the Feyenoord dressing room from day one was English. His command of English is superb, as you may see in his press conferences.”

Van der Kraan has described Slot’s soccer as “attractive” however believes his persona can be simply as essential in serving to him cope with high stars for the primary time, in addition to bringing by children.

“Character is what you want in England to reach the Premier League as a overseas supervisor,” says Van der Kraan. “You could have good communication with the media.

“He is been sensible at that within the Netherlands and assume will probably be the identical in England. His persona could also be simply as essential as his concepts and his philosophy about soccer.

“We have seen right here that in each staff he is coached, gamers have developed and improved. He leaves each membership in monetary scenario as a result of he is made positive that gamers have gone up in worth and others come by to switch them.

“When he arrived right here there was hardly any cash. Now, even he says that the cash is banging in opposition to the window.”

Tv reporter and Feyenoord correspondent Dennis van Eersel agrees that Slot has the boldness, perception and persona to fill the boots left by Jurgen Klopp.

“I feel Slot can handle even these expectations,” he says. “He can address this circumstance, which is large – coping with world-class gamers and a world-class membership.”

Again in Slot’s dwelling city, a former neighbour and boyhood buddy, Albert Ligtenberg, cannot look forward to Slot to place little Bergentheim on the map.

Requested for his abiding reminiscence of younger Arne, he mentioned: “He was all the time with a ball. At all times enjoying soccer on the road or within the fields. A superb boy.”

Albert, two years older than Arne and now teaching a neighborhood boys’ staff, mentioned: “Arne Slot is an inspiration.” Liverpool can be hoping so.

Can he obtain by the Mersey the success and trophies he is managed by the Nieuwe Mass? Slot and people who know him consider he can.

Because the Stunning South as soon as sang – virtually – this may very well be Rotterdam or Liverpool.

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