A year before Liverpool won the title, their sporting director, Richard Hughes, met a Dutch coach at his home in Zwolle. Data analysis and character references had already made Arne Slot the club’s preferred choice to succeed Jürgen Klopp.
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“At that moment I didn’t even think about Arne,” the former Liverpool goalkeeper Sander Westerveld told the BBC. He has been Slot’s friend since they played together at Sparta Rotterdam. In England, Westerveld said, people knew little about him.
A year later, on April 27, 2025, Liverpool beat Tottenham 5-1 at Anfield and won the Premier League with four games to spare. It was a 20th English league title, level with Manchester United’s record. By then Slot’s side had won 25 of 34 league games and lost two. They finished on 84 points, ten ahead of Arsenal.
Why did Klopp walk away from a team top of the league?
Klopp announced on January 26, 2024, that he would leave at the end of the season, with his contract still running to 2026. Liverpool were top of the Premier League when he said it. His reason was blunt. He was, he said, “running out of energy”.
He had told Mike Gordon, the president of the club’s owner, Fenway Sports Group, in November. The players heard only on the day he went public, before training. Klopp talked about the parts of the job he would not miss, among them six press conferences a week for nine years.
He also said why the moment suited him. The squad, he argued, was a good base to work from, and so it was the right time to hand it to someone else. His assistants Pepijn Lijnders and Peter Krawietz, and the development coach Vitor Matos, would leave with him.
The Guardian’s later account says the timing gave Liverpool something clubs rarely get when a manager leaves: time to search properly. They used it.
Who was linked with the job first?
The best-known name was Xabi Alonso, a former Liverpool midfielder then managing Bayer Leverkusen. Sky Sports called him the early frontrunner on the day Klopp spoke. Alonso announced that he would stay in Germany, which opened the way for Slot.
Slot had already said no to one Premier League club. While at Feyenoord in May 2023, he ruled himself out of the running for the Tottenham job.
Liverpool fans did not ask for a copy of Klopp. Neil Atkinson of The Anfield Wrap, a fan podcast and website, told the BBC that supporters wanted Slot to be himself.
What was Slot doing before this?
ESPN reports that he grew up in Bergentheim, a Dutch canal village, watching his father’s involvement in the local team. In 1995, aged 17, he won a permanent place in the FC Zwolle squad and made his debut in a 2-1 defeat by FC Den Bosch in the Dutch second division. After seven years at Zwolle he moved to NAC Breda, under the coach Henk ten Cate.
His old colleagues describe a thinker rather than an athlete. Ten Cate told ESPN that Slot “lacked speed” and made up for it with intelligence. Bram van Polen, a Zwolle teammate, was blunter. He said Slot was a little bit lazy as a player, and that Slot spent his time on YouTube hunting for corner and free-kick routines.
Van Polen also saw the irony. The work Slot demands of his players now is the work he disliked doing himself.
ESPN says Henk de Jong gave him a first break in management, as his assistant at SC Cambuur in 2016. De Jong told ESPN that Slot the player was always thinking three steps ahead, because a player without pace has to think fast.
What did he change at Liverpool?
Not the squad. Federico Chiesa was the only addition for the season. Liverpool tried to sign Martín Zubimendi from Real Sociedad and failed, so Ryan Gravenberch was moved to the base of midfield instead.
What Slot changed was the method. In his first meeting with the players, Westerveld said, he brought data from the 2019-20 title season and from Klopp’s last season. The comparison showed fewer sprints and a less effective team. Rather than tell the squad to work harder, Slot showed them exactly what they had to do.
The day changed shape too. Players now arrived at the Kirkby training ground for breakfast at 9.15am, earlier than under Klopp. Slot’s staff added breathing exercises before training and matches, a routine called “body wake-up”. The squad no longer stayed together in a hotel before home games.
The meetings multiplied. On the pre-season tour of the United States, at a Pittsburgh hotel, the day’s meeting schedule went up on a board. There were one-to-one sessions with coaches, squad meetings, and reviews of each training session and each player within it.
Ibrahima Konaté, one of several players who stepped up a level, remembered Slot showing clips of a player who stopped running. Nobody was spared, Konaté said, not Mohamed Salah and not Virgil van Dijk. Every player thought, he said: “I have to give 2,000% always.”
If Slot met a player in a training-ground corridor, he would pick up a nearby tactics board and explain an idea on the spot. At half-time he usually did the same, calmly, rather than shout. Southampton at home in March was the exception. He tore into his players first, Liverpool turned a 1-0 deficit into a 2-1 lead by the 55th minute, and they won 3-1.
What nearly knocked it off course?
Time, at first. Because of the European Championship, Slot had his whole squad together for just 13 days before the opening game at Ipswich. He called it “a disadvantage” and “not an excuse”.
Then came a home defeat by Nottingham Forest in September, which stunned him. In the next game Liverpool fell behind in Milan, and Slot did not change course. What followed was a league run of 26 games without defeat.
His temper did slip. After two points got away at Goodison Park, his words to the referee Michael Oliver earned him a two-match touchline ban. The Guardian reported it as out of character. Before that same game, he had sat on his haunches outside the away dressing room reading the match programme.
The longest-running threat was off the pitch. Salah’s contract was running down, and at one stage he said he was “more out than in”. Slot rang Hughes several times that season to push for a deal. On April 11, 2025, Salah signed for two more years, to 2027. He named the trophies still to win, his family, and his relationship with Slot as reasons to stay.
How good were the players he trusted?
Salah’s season set records. His 29 league goals and 18 assists made 47 goal involvements, the most in a 38-game Premier League season. He became the first player to win the league’s Golden Boot, its Playmaker award and its player of the season award in one year.
The BBC compared him with the year before. In Klopp’s final season he had 18 league goals and 10 assists from 32 appearances. Cody Gakpo had 17 goals in all competitions by late April, already more than his previous season’s total.
The Premier League’s own Opta analysis gives more figures. At the time the title was won, Liverpool had scored 80 league goals, 14 more than Manchester City. It says Van Dijk became the first Dutch player to captain a side to the English title. It also says only once before had a manager and captain from the same country won the league together, at Arsenal in 2003-04.
Slot also joined an elite group of bosses who won the Premier League in their first season in charge, the BBC reported. The others are José Mourinho, Carlo Ancelotti, Manuel Pellegrini and Antonio Conte.
What did the day itself look like?
Tottenham scored first, through Dominic Solanke. Sky Sports reports that Luis Díaz, Alexis Mac Allister and Gakpo scored before half-time, and Salah added a fourth after the break. It says a Destiny Udogie own goal made it five.
Salah took a selfie on a fan’s phone. Slot, soaked in champagne by his players, said they had sat on the bus convinced they could not lose. ESPN noticed a smaller gesture. With seconds left, Slot turned round and blew a kiss towards his family in the crowd.
Sky Sports notes that the 2020 title had been won during the pandemic, when supporters could not celebrate inside the stadium. Its reporter at Anfield said the players and staff lined up at the Kop end and sang “You’ll Never Walk Alone” back to the fans.
Where was Klopp?
He came back for the last game. Liverpool drew 1-1 with Crystal Palace on May 25, 2025, then lifted the trophy, and Klopp was seen clapping and smiling.
Slot gave him credit that day. His predecessor, he said, had left a disciplined team with quality, and that made his own job easier to start.
Sixteen months earlier, Klopp had said he would not reconsider even if Liverpool won every trophy that season. He judged that the squad was ready for someone else.
