Liverpool boss Arne Slot’s journey to becoming a football coach was profoundly influenced by his experiences both on and off the pitch.
A midfielder by trade, he began his professional career in his home country of the Netherlands, representing clubs such as FC Zwolle, NAC Breda, Sparta Rotterdam, and PEC Zwolle.
During his later playing years at Sparta, Slot formed a close friendship with fellow player Westerveld, further enriching his experience in the game.
It was during this time that the passion for coaching, which had been ignited in him as he filled in for his father, began to evolve into a serious aspiration for his future.
“I think I knew when I was quite young already that I wanted to become a coach or a manager,” the Liverpool boss explained in a new interview – presented by the club’s official training partner, AXA – with former Reds goalkeeper Sander Westerveld.
“My father was a coach at an amateur club and he was also a teacher, so he had a lot of days off, a lot of holidays and then he always asked me if I could do those sessions, and I always liked that.”
“When I became a bit older, I became the captain,” said Slot. “And you know how it is, managers always ask – some managers always ask – ‘What do you guys think about it?’ And everybody is quiet, they are all waiting for someone to step up and say something.
“To be honest, it was mostly me then because it also gave me the chance to express what I thought we could improve. Hopefully, as I remember it, in a positive way.
“It was also a chance for me because I really needed the team, I wasn’t a player that could do anything on an individual basis, I always needed my teammates to play OK-to-good.
“I needed the team for sure because I had no individual quality. I couldn’t dribble, I could only pass so I needed my teammates. I could pass quite well for the level I was at. But then you need your teammates to go in the right moment deep and to play you the ball in the right moment.
“Because I wasn’t that fast, if I was free I needed to get the ball in the right moment and at the right timing. So you start to think about that in a younger age if you’re not that fast, and I did this.
“And I always liked to work with people and hopefully to help them – even the younger players in the team – to help them to become better or to play better.”
Slot hung up his boots in 2013 following a stint at PEC Zwolle, but he had already begun charting his path into coaching with the club.
His coaching journey, which has seen him take the reins at SC Cambuur Leeuwarden, AZ Alkmaar, Feyenoord, and now Liverpool, started with a year in charge of Zwolle’s U14s.
He recalled: “The last choice I made in my career – to leave Sparta, where we played together, to go to my former club PEC Zwolle – was all about me wanting to become a manager, because I already put in that contract that after I would stop as a player I would become an assistant coach for two years.
“Why two years? Because at that moment you needed two years of experience as an assistant coach before you could do the course in Holland to become a head coach.
“So I was like, OK, that is the minimum I need to have.
“When I was at Sparta, maybe I could have still played at a bit higher level than the club I went to, Zwolle, who at that moment were a first division club.
“But it was a choice for my managerial career.”
Asked by Westerveld about his approach on the training pitch, Slot said: “I do find it is really important that players come in and before they even go to the training ground they feel like, ‘Oh, it’s going to be a nice day, the exercises will be nice.’
“So, I always want energy in my exercises. I think we might have 10 or 15, or maybe a bit more, certain exercises. We sometimes tweak it a bit or adjust it a bit, but the idea behind most exercises are quite similar. If I see that there are certain exercises that they like, we’re not going to do them every day because that doesn’t help, but those exercises where I feel I only have to do this and they will [love it], I’ll wait for the moment that they are really tired. That could be if we have a training camp that I use this.
“If you want to think that I’ve been successful at AZ, Feyenoord and now Liverpool, if that is true then the reason behind that is not about all the tactics board and tactical things, it’s about energy – players every day having a lot of energy and working really hard to improve. And that they want to come in and they like what they are doing.
“So, if they are around here I think they need to have fun. My job and our job as a staff is to create fun while they are learning. That is also one of the things I have in my team meetings. It’s all about wanting to teach them something but it should also be fun.
“I don’t mean fun in the way that we are laughing only, but if players come in I want to create a culture and atmosphere where players like to be at this training ground.”
He added: “Giving confidence to players is also one of the things I think about. If we have a team meeting, I don’t talk [for] hours about the opponent, I just talk about ourselves.
“Indirectly, that also has to give them confidence; we are not sitting in the room talking [for] 20 minutes about what [the opponent] can do and all these things they can do. No, we are talking about: where can we hurt them? That is much more of my time than where do we have to be afraid of?
“It is all about giving players confidence but if you give them confidence, confidence can grow to a certain point where we can call it arrogance, so you have to find that balance between getting them confidence but understanding what it takes to win every game.”
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