The man who has supplanted Pep Guardiola as coach of the Premier League champions is, it turns out, something of a fanboy. “He was always talking about Pep,” says Henk de Jong, now in his third spell as coach of Cambuur, the Dutch club where Arne Slot got his first break as assistant 11 years ago.
“We were sometimes laughing at him,” De Jong says, describing how Slot would get out his extensive video collection of Bayern Munich and Barcelona games to amplify a tactical point. “‘Pep again, eh?’ we would say. He had videos of all his games. And we would sit and listen to him talk about what he was seeing.”
