Liverpool’s Succession Plan Appears to Have Worked
Liverpool had always known the day would come eventually. At some point, the club’s legendary manager, Jürgen Klopp, would leave the place that loved him more than anywhere else in the world.
So when Klopp told his Liverpool bosses last year that he was ready to go, club officials were shaken, though hardly surprised. This wasn’t the first time that an exhausted Klopp had indicated to the club’s owners, the Boston-based Fenway Sports Group, that the pressure of the Premier League was taking its toll. But this time, he meant it.
The conversation didn’t just signal the end of an era. It also started the clock on one of the most daunting challenges in sports: replacing an iconic coach.
“We created a real good basis for the next manager so the club can go from there,” Klopp said on his way out. “It’s really important what you leave behind.”
That’s easier said than done at most clubs. But since Liverpool replaced Klopp, the charismatic German who brought his brand of high-energy, everywhereall- the-time soccer to Merseyside, the team has hardly missed a beat.
Now led by Arne Slot, the 46-year-old Dutchman it plucked from Feyenoord, Liverpool is off to a historically hot start.
Slot has lost just one of his first 17 games in charge across all competitions and sits in first place in the Premier League and the Champions League group stage. Its latest victory, a 2-0 win over Aston Villa on Saturday, extended its domestic lead to five points over Manchester City.
“Big shoes to fill, but you can also look at it as inheriting a squad and a team which has a winning culture,” Slot said at his unveiling. “I look at being a suc-cessor to someone who was successful as ideal, because there is an opportunity to win something.”
To chalk this success up to simply picking the right candidate is to ignore the reshaping of the Liverpool universe that went into it. This was no ordinary workplace hire.
When Klopp broke the news to FSG in November 2023 that he would leave the following summer, he was giving them roughly six months’ notice.
In Liverpool, it sent an analytics department led by a researcher with a Harvard Ph.D. in particle physics into high gear. The stated objective was to find a coach who believed in attractive, attacking soccer, a leader who could mesh with the culture, and above all, someone with a mathematically-proven track record of punching above his weight.
In Boston, Klopp’s impending departure also coincided with a giant rethink about how FSG would run its soccer operations.
For one, the new boss wouldn’t be granted the same title. Whereas Klopp had been Liverpool’s manager, the next man on the touchline would be a head coach.
The difference might seem semantic, but it aligned with a new structure at the club.
Michael Edwards, an architect of the squad that won the 2019-20 Premier League title was returning as FSG’s CEO of Football. FSG also appointed Richard Hughes as sporting director. And together, they would take the lead on hiring Slot.
Liverpool insiders say that this reorganization proved to be essential in a post-Klopp world. After all, Klopp had turned himself into a Premier League outlier simply by sticking around.
By the time he left Anfield last summer, his nearly nine years in charge had made him the longest-tenured active coach in England’s top tier. Every other club had been through the recruitment process at least once. (And across town, Everton had been through it seven times.) Just a few months into the highest profile job of his career, Slot has made it clear that he gets it.
“It will take some time to understand everything,” Slot said. “It always helps to get to know the city…It helps even more if you win most of your games.”
