Arne Slot has announced that he will not celebrate his birthday this year, marking the first time in his life that he has chosen to forego the occasion.
Slot, who turns 46 on Tuesday, will be focusing on one of the proudest moments of his career as he leads Liverpool into a high-stakes clash with AC Milan at the San Siro.
For Slot, the significance of this match far outweighs any birthday celebrations, as it represents a crucial test of his European ambitions this season.
This fixture is a key reason why Slot joined Liverpool, but he will need to improve upon his past performances in Italy.
During his tenure with Feyenoord, Slot experienced disappointing results in Italy, including losses to Lazio and Roma in the Europa League, and a defeat to Lazio in the Champions League.
Additionally, Feyenoord were defeated 4-2 on penalties by Roma in the Europa League play-offs and lost the 2022 Europa Conference League final to Roma.
Despite these past challenges, Slot is not intimidated by the upcoming game against Milan.
He laughed off concerns about the pressure of facing such a formidable opponent so early in his Liverpool tenure, demonstrating his confidence and focus.
Slot said: “I think it is the first time my birthday is not important for tomorrow, it’s a big game for me and because of the history these two teams have, the venue, it’s one to look forward to.
“I don’t think any manager is scared to play the other team but we have a lot of respect for AC Milan.
“They have quality, we’re not scared but we respect all their players.
“They have shown they are in good form with a very good 4-0 win [against Venezia on Saturday].
“Scared is not the word we would use. We respect [them] a lot.”
He added: If rotation would be the reason why we don’t win a game then probably it wouldn’t be the first game I lost in 2024 last Saturday, because indeed we didn’t rotate a lot.
“For me, but everybody can have their own opinion, it is too simple to put this loss on rotation because I think too many players didn’t reach their normal level, that was not only the ones that started but also the ones that came in.
“For me, it had a lot to do with the playing style of the opponent, who made it really difficult for us, but in the end if you don’t win then you try to look at as many arguments as you can find – and I also asked myself the question, ‘OK, does it have to do with the things you said?’
“But I prefer to look at the game back and see what we did well, what we didn’t do well and I think we could have done a lot of things much better that was not related to rotation.
“We will never know, if I would have rotated three or four new players in if we would have won then.
“This is going to be a long answer! I think it was the day before, [in the] the press conference, somebody said to me 10 of your players had started for their national teams, so which ones were completely rested then?
“Now I can do something about the rotation in the upcoming games because they are all with me, but before that were with the national teams – and almost all of them player two times 90 minutes.
“I think they were prepared for that, we tried to prepare them for that and, for me, this loss didn’t have to do with rotation, more to do with the opponent and too many players not bringing what they can bring.”
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