Arne Slot has admitted he is relishing the prospect of going head on against Pep Guardila for the first time as Liverpool boss when Manchester City visit Anfield in December. The current Premier League leaders will face the defending champions at home on December 1, just days after hosting Champions League holders Real Madrid.
Guardiola’s visit with his City side will mark the beginning of a new era of rivalry in English football after the celebrated Spaniard’s numerous memorable jousts with former Reds manager Jurgen Klopp during the latter’s tenure of almost nine years at Merseyside.
Slot also admitted he had previously shown players under his care clips of Guardiola’s City teams and said he is looking forward to pitting his wits against the Catalan when the current top two squads square off in just over a month’s time.
“It is true I showed my players in recent years clips of Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City teams,” Slot told Men In Blazers.
“But I also showed them, many times, clips of Jurgen Klopp’s team at Liverpool and it was mostly to do with how intense both teams pressed, the work-rate these top professionals have and then compared with how we did it at that moment.
“In football I think we are all a bit similar, you try to steal ideas from different managers and at this moment in time, so many good managers are out there. I even faced many of them in the Premier League and Champions League as well. So Pep is of course not only because he is a great manager, he is a is difficult test to face but also he is leading a team with a lot of quality.
“The good thing for us is that we also have a lot of quality, so I am looking forward to that game. But there are also a lot of games to be played in the meantime and this will come after the Real Madrid game, which is also a massive one.”
When asked about Klopp’s singing of his name after the legendary German’s final match in charge of the Reds in May in front of 60,000 at Anfield – in a move which all but confirmed Slot would be succeeding him – Slot added: “I didn’t see it live, because we were playing our last game at Feyenoord that day and I think I was at a party at that moment
“But I got the text messages, people came to me showing me what he did. Jurgen is so, so popular with the fans and the staff around the AXA Training Centre because of how successful he was, but definitely also because of the person he was.
“So to do this, which has never been done before, it might happen again in the future but I don’t expect it to happen a lot and it says a lot about him that he did this.
“I should ask him if he come up with this at that moment or he thought about it weeks before because to come up with ‘Jurgen Klopp la la la’ and then to change it to Arne Slot is quite creative. So I will ask him if he came up with it then or thought about it weeks before.”