For most of Sunday, Rotterdam sat under a thick blanket of cloud, but as day ticked into evening, just as fans were streaming into De Kuip for Feyenoord’s penultimate home fixture of the season, the skies cleared. On what became a glorious, balmy evening the team comprehensively outclassed PEC Zwolle.
Arne Slot, overseeing his 100th league game in charge, watched from the touchline and his son, Joep, who for the best part of three years had dreamed of being allowed into the noisiest part of the ground, stood among the ultras in the Gerard Meijer Tribune.
In the 82nd minute, the entire ground sung his father’s name and, just as Slot lifted his hands above his head to return their applause, Santiago Giménez scored the final goal in a 5-0 win. When the final whistle blew, and Slot walked towards the fans to bid farewell, the PA eschewed the ear-splitting techno that had soundtracked the rest of the night and played You’ll Never Walk Alone. Football rarely permits moments of such infinite perfection.
“It’s not a normal situation for a manager that the fans are singing your name, let alone that they do it in such a way, with the whole stadium singing,” Slot said later. “Normally it happens when a manager loses one or two games, and the whole stadium stands up to sing different songs.”
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When Feyenoord host Excelsior on Sunday week, much of the Gerard Meijer Tribune will be closed in punishment for the fans’ use of flares in the KNVB Cup semi-final win over Groningen. For many of the club’s hard-core supporters, this was goodbye. “I’ve never seen Feyenoord play like this. I really mean it,” said Paul van Dijk, a season-ticket holder in that end for the last 15 years.
“Players come and go, managers come and go. This is modern football, isn’t it? But this is one manager we’re very sad to see go. We’re sad, but proud. We’re proud to say he’s earned it at Feyenoord, but also sad that we need to kind of start again. I told my friends that we were living a dream with him, and now the dream is coming to an end.”
In his first season in Rotterdam, Slot took Feyenoord to third place in the league and the Europa Conference League final. In his second they won the Eredivisie title for just the second time this century, and in his third he has won the KNVB Cup, with his team on track to exceed last season’s points total and beaten to a second title only by a freakishly successful PSV Eindhoven.
Now he is leaving for Liverpool, but as Slot conducted the fans’ roars after the final whistle it was hard to tell if this was an ideal moment to depart, or a ludicrous one.
“Yes, that’s a different judgment to make every time,” Slot said. “Last season the fans were quite similar to what they are now. Then it felt like things are not done here yet; I wanted to go for one extra year, or maybe even longer. But then sometimes in life opportunities come along and you have to ask yourself the question: ‘Will I continue this journey at this club, or is this a good moment to leave?’ And I’ve made that choice.”
It is only four months since Slot told an interviewer: “I have no reason to think my future will be anywhere else” and that “I could become a kind of Arsène Wenger at Feyenoord”. Instead, he will attempt to be a kind of Jürgen Klopp, in acclaim if not in method.
Though the scenes after the final whistle felt distinctly Kloppian, it was unusual behaviour from someone who is normally more reserved. Slot is a calm presence on the touchline, spending most of his time either with arms crossed or his hands in his pockets, rarely raising his voice.
“As a person he’s very down to earth, not big shouting and that kind of stuff,” said Mario Been, who came through the youth system at Feyenoord, spent six seasons in the first team before returning for two as manager, and is now a TV analyst. “I speak a lot with him, and the way he talks about football, the way he talks in general, I think he’s a very amiable man, a man that is very warm for the players. He is a human, he loves to work with people.
“From nothing he can make something. I know there are a lot of Dutch coaches that didn’t succeed in England but I think this man, when you give him the time, he can do something there. From day one he will build the way he wants to play: press high, and everybody has to do that. And he opens the eyes of the players. For example Quinten Timber, last year he was rubbish. Then Arne started talking with him, telling him: ‘You have to do more.’ Now he’s a national team player.”
In the last two seasons Feyenoord have raised €110m through player sales, with more departures expected in the summer. Giménez, who arrived from the Mexican club Cruz Azul for €6m in 2022, is one of them. “He’s a complete coach because he understands when to tell you that you did well, and when to tell you that you did bad and you need to improve,” the 23-year-old said of Slot.
“I think that’s a real advantage of Arne, that he can talk with the players really well and he knows what he wants for a team. He will bring intensity in pressing, he will bring a lot of offensive plays. I think Arne loves to attack, and attack makes you strong in defence.”
On Sunday Feyenoord’s 4-1-3-2 formation became a full-on front five when in possession, with the full-backs often joining in. The centre-back Thomas Beelen – who was very impressive defensively, if less so with his distribution – occasionally carried the ball forward, leaving only two players behind him. “It was somewhere in the second half that we gave away two chances and that is, I think, typical for us,” Slot said. “We don’t concede a lot of chances and a lot of counterattacks, despite the fact that we are a very offensive team – we attack with a lot of players. Scoring five goals is not a coincidence.”
Key for their style of play is the players’ fitness: Slot may be a good coach to play for, but clearly he is not an easy one. “Even in the final minutes of the game it’s full press, running all over the pitch,” said Dennis Kranenburg, a former youth-team player who now commentates on Feyenoord’s games for Rijnmond radio. “The players like the way he communicates with them, he’s always very clear. One of them told me: ‘When the manager says before a game that this, this and this will happen; this, this and this happens.’ Everything he said before is what happened.
“He’s also very clear in his way of talking to the media. He’s a clever guy and he knows what he wants to say, and the fans hear it and they love it. That is maybe his strongest point. I think when you ask anybody here in the stadium, ‘What do you think of Arne Slot?’ everybody will say, ‘Give him a statue, or name the stadium after him.’ Yeah, he is very popular here.”
If Sunday played out like a dream, it must have come as little surprise to a group of fans who have spent three years living one. In Liverpool another manager, despite also narrowly failing to win the league, will soon take his fans’ applause for the final time. For Slot, a new challenge awaits. – Guardian
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