Arne Slot has conquered the Premier League Stormerderhand in his debut season as manager of Liverpool.
The Dutchman, 46, looks at course to win the title – only the second second in the first era – for Arsenal.
But this is not the first time he has caused a stir and sent shock waves around football with his tactical revolution.
Although, his never-viewed-for-very-very idea from 2011 did not really have the same success.
In fact, it was branded “a brilliant failing” – “a brilliant failure”.
Because what lock did, was completely stunning.
As a midfielder for PEC Zwolle in the Dutch second layer, he received permission from his coaches to try something new in an attempt to bamboozle the opposition.
He certainly did that – and undoubtedly also his own teammates and fans.
Player Slot took the kick -off with Joey van den Berg, raised the ball and then started it as high as possible in the air in barely credible scenes.
The original idea was to try to kick the ball high in the opposition – even in the penalty area – and for Slot's Zwolle teammates to chase it and cause chaos in the hope of benefiting from the confusion and scoring of the defense.
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The idea was done in the training – and too good enough effect to try the experiment in a competition.
But when it arrived at the crunch moment, Slot is completely wrong, because he almost immediately sent football vertically – actually slightly backwards – rather than going to the goal.
In his own half, it bounced just within the middle circle between a couple of very confused football players in the midst of ironic cheers of the crowd – while the commentator described the inscrutable start of the game as “extremely strange”.
Slot's embarrassing blunder is still with great pleasure in Dutch football, regularly shown on TV and those involved can only laugh at the pure ridiculity of all this.
Slot's manager at the time, Art Langeler, said to the newspaper De Stentor: “By firing the ball as high as possible in the penalty area, the idea was that our three Spiters would run forward and would be there (before it fell) on the edge of the area. And who would know what would come?
“[We tried it in training] Three times even. That is why [assistant] Jaap Stam and I said to each other: “Let's try it.”
“Made himself ridiculous”
“But of course it needed the right version.
“It looked funny. And if you didn't know the background, you would think: 'What the hell do they do? They just shoot the ball in the air. '
“No, this was a brilliant failure, let's leave it at that.”
Another Zwolle coach Jan Everse added to the athletics: “It was still a ridiculous idea. Arne has many ideas – this was unfortunately one of his worst.
“The kick wasn't what he wanted. He was completely wrong.
“He made himself look ridiculous – it was incredible.”
Unbelievable, Slot was determined to try the tactic again and did this later the same year – again against Cambuil – and again it went terribly wrong.
Safe to say, we will not expect Mo Salah or Dominik Szoboszlai to play the hoof-right-in-the-Air-and-Hope-it-IT-it-Causes chaos in the Premier League soon in the Premier League soon …
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