When Jürgen Klopp left Liverpool Last spring, the Premier League was derive in a new era. Like an estimated coach left the League, he had helped define, a new one, Mikel Arteta, rose. And so, it seems, Manchester City of Arsenal and Pep Guardiola seemed on the point Govern the PREM in the foreseeable future. They had finished n ° 1 and 2 in each of the two previous seasons. They entered in 2024-25 as joint favoritespartly because all four just as rich The rivals were led by unproven managers.
Over the past eight months, Liverpool has categorically refuted this logic.
Advertisement
The Reds passed at the top of the table, and Sunday, With a 5-1 battery from Tottenhamwon his second first League title because, from August to April, they had the best – and healthiest – team -.
They also won the League, of course, because Arne Slot managed his team wonderfully. The first-year coach, who had spent his entire career in the Netherlands, instantly adapted to England. He empowered Mohammed Salah, and maximized Ryan Gravenberch, and trusted Trent Alexander-Arnold, warts and defects and everything.
But he did not reinvent Liverpool, as many were waiting for him. Rather, he recognized that football can always be a sport focused on players. And he allowed his players to lead him to a trophy.
Mohamed Salah helped Liverpool to his second Premier League title. (Photo by Liverpool FC via Getty Images)
(Liverpool FC via Getty Images)
The lesson of the title of the Premier League of Liverpool
He has not done what so many modern managers try to do and what the media often wants them to do: impose their beliefs and their personality on their new club. When Erik Ten Hag arrived in Manchester United, and Ange Postcoglou in Tottenham, for example, both seemed to follow the Guardiola-Arte-Klopp game book. They brought semi-revolutionary ideas. They tried to establish their authority and put their stamp on a “project. “Of course, that's what their clubs paid them (generously).
Advertisement
And it is, today, what fans ask for their coach: a dominant figure that resides the tactics and establishes culture, which animates the whole story of their team. It is What Guardiola did; This is how Klopp challenged it; It is, thought, this is how Artea dragged Arsenal in a rut of a decade. Everyone transformed their team, whether with a position game or a “heavy football” – with something separate. This has become the favorite road to the top of the Premier League.
But this is not the only route.
That is the lesson of the triumph of Liverpool in 2024-25.
The slot team is different from that of Klopp, but not in a flashy way, easily definable.
Advertisement
It was the best because he deployed the best players, and the slot of slot was simply to allow it to be the story.
He is intelligent and oriented towards detail. His tactics helped Liverpool win matches on the sidelines. Its programming rotation and substitutions have maintained key and fresh key players. To be very clear: he had an active hand in this title.
But it was his passive approach that paved the way for Liverpool's declaration: the players (still) win the football matches.
Luis Diaz (L) of Liverpool scored the first Reds goal on Sunday against Tottenham Hotspur en route to a 5-1 victory to win the title of Premier League. (Ap photo / Jon Super)
(Associated Press)
How Liverpool fled with the League
Slot and the club recognized that the team he had built was perfectly capable of facing. He did not arrive with a list of wishes and led, categorically, that the sports director of Liverpool, Richard Hughes, leaves and sign five expensive studs. Instead, they signed a single player – Federico Chiesa, who did not start a Premier League match all season. The 19 players who to have Started at least once all in Liverpool last year.
Advertisement
Slot simply worked with them and they delivered. Salah, with less defensive responsibility and more attacker freedom than he had under Klopp, was reunited Maybe his best season. Virgil van Dijk has cemented as the best defender in the league. As Aged city (and Rodri has torn his ACL)And while Arsenal hungry for creativity, Gravenberch of Liverpool, Alexis Mac Allister and Dominik Szoboszlai became the most complete and balanced midfielder in the League.
Slot has never deleted any of them. He stayed with Alexander-Arnold despite his fragile defensive and with Luis Díaz despite his inconsistency. The end result is a secure title with four games to lose.
Critics will argue that it is a title won almost by default. Arsenal has lost all its strikers. City has lost its legs, stars and control. Also will not exceed 80 points. Their crises allowed Liverpool to waltz in a two -digit advance that no one has ever threatened to erase. The Reds, meanwhile, sometimes commanded but never really creeping. Their differential of objectives, currently +48, could finally be the lowest reached by a winner of the title of Premier League since the +32 of Leicester City in 2015-2016.
But they deserve instructive champions and champions. Football, we have reminded us, does not need to be on the person on the key line. It is, at the end of the day, people who score goals, prevent them, create them.
