Arne Slot Reminisces With Former Teammate Sander Westerveld
Two Dutchmen walk into a coffee bar...
Arne Slot welcomed former teammate and former Red Sander Westerveld to the AXA Training Centre for a very interesting, wide ranging discussion about their history, Slot’s life in Liverpool, and his coaching philosophies.
The nearly 20 minute interview is up on Youtube. It shows the two Dutchmen chatting in a variety of locations within the training centre, showing off the many impressive facilities at the new coach’s fingertips.
Slot and Westerveld played together at Sparta Rotterdam for one season in 2007-08, when Slot was the captain and Westerveld was the hotshot goalkeeper from Liverpool.
“The player I was and the players I played with, we were not used to getting such a big star in our dressing room,” Slot said of Westerveld’s arrival at the club. “The who came from Liverpool and then all of a sudden came to Sparta.”
For his part, Westerveld’s said of his first impression of Slot “you were the guy doing the talking. You were the guy having the discussions with the coach [...] You were already the one who was the coach already then.”
Talking about how he’s adjusting to life in Liverpool, Slot joked, “You could argue, ‘do I have a private life?’ That is, my family stayed in Holland. That means that if I’m here, 99% of my time is just working.” While that sounds a bit depressing, he insisted, “Nobody has to feel sorry for me, but [his time with his family] is a difference.”
Perhaps the most surprising information revealed by Slot is the impact of his meeting with former Liverpool coach Pep Lijinders.
“I think it was all somewhere around that time when I met up with Pepijn Lijinders, former assistant of Jürgen, who sat in this office,” he said. “I did my courses and all these kinds of things, but I think I learned the most when it comes to training exercises because of that meeting we had, and we spoke about his ideas, my ideas, how to translate that...”
When describing the role of a coach and what makes him successful, Slot cites positive energy, as well as a coach’s ability to accurately explain his vision to the players.
“If you want to think that I’ve been successful at AZ and at Feyenoord, and now at Liverpool, if that is true, then the reason behind that is not about all this tactics boards and all these tactics things,” he explained. “It’s about energy, you’re 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. And my job, our job as a staff, is to create fun while they are learning.”
Liverpool Football Club runs out vibes, you heard it here first.
“It’s all about what you have in your head,” Slot continued. “‘How can I bring that information to the players [so] that they understand it?’ All the things I know, all the managers around the world might even know it, but it’s more about: ‘How can I bring that information towards the players so that they truly understand what I want from them?’ That can be in a meeting with videos, that can be in a training sessions, and all these things that can be in a one v one conversation. All the managers almost know the same, in my opinion, because if you go to YouTube, you can find all the exercises everybody already does. So many people write about tactics, so it’s not that difficult to understand tactics or to understand good training ideas, but it’s all about: ‘How do I bring this to the players, how do I get them full of energy on a daily basis?’”
The whole interview is worth a watch. It was nice seeing Slot talking in a more relaxed environment.
Source: liverpooloffside.sbnation.com
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