Top five revealed - Who were Arne Slot's biggest managerial influences as a player?

A Dutch masterclass 

Liverpool’s remarkable return to the top of the Premier League last season was made all the more impressive due to the fact that the man placed in charge of the title challenge was a relatively unknown quantity. Picked to be the successor to Jürgen Klopp at Anfield, the English giants appointed Feyenoord boss Arne Slot last year and haven’t looked back since. But, aside from well and truly hitting the ground running at Liverpool, very little is known about the man that conquered English football with relative ease.

Being a Dutch tactician, many would assume that Slot is a disciple of the Johan Cruyff school of football and perhaps even has old VHS tapes of Louis Van Gaal’s coaching sessions at home, but more often than not managers are shaped and largely influenced by the coaches they worked under when they were players. So who were the managers that Slot spent most of his career working under when he was a player?

Much of the reason why Slot didn’t have a larger profile in English football before joining Liverpool is due to the fact that he never played outside of the Netherlands when he was a player. For example, despite being a talented central midfielder, Slot spent most of his career playing in the second division of Dutch football for FC Zwolle, either side of a stint in the Eredivisie for NAC Breda and Sparta Rotterdam. And, as a result, much of his initial schooling in the art of football management would have come from the head coaches that he worked under at these three clubs.

Curiously, the coach that Slot played under the most was Art Langeler, who was the future Liverpool manager’s head coach at Zwolle. With none other than Jaap Stam as his assistant coach, Langeler and Slot helped guide Zwolle to back-to-back promotion pushes, missing out in the play-offs on the first attempt and then won automatic promotion in the 2011/12 season with a first-place finish. In total, Slot worked under Langeler and Stam in 99 games across no less than nine seasons in the first and second tiers of Dutch football.

Next on the list of Slot’s biggest managerial influences is Ton Lokhoff, who Slot worked under during his time at NAC Breda between 2003 and 2006. In that time, Slot featured in three Eredivisie league campaigns, helping the club finish as high as ninth in the table. Lokhoff, in typical fashion, preferred to play a 4-3-3 system that remains the go-to formation in Dutch football. Notably, it was under Lokhoff that Slot had one of only two experiences of European football, when Breda played Newcastle in the first knock-out round of the UEFA Cup in 2003. Slot played in both legs, which Breda lost on aggregate 6-0, and had nothing but a yellow card in the second leg to show for his troubles.

Third on the list is Dwight Lodeweges, who Slot played 79 games for upon his return to Zwolle towards the end of his career. Most of these games were in the Dutch second tier. In fourth place is Dutch tactician Foeke Booy, who coached Slot for 45 games at Sparta Rotterdam in the Eredivisie to back-to-back 13th-placed finishes. And then in fifth place is Ernie Brandts, who Slot played under for a grand total of 32 games at Breda in the 2007/08 season.