With Liverpool becoming the Premier League champions last Sunday with a 5-1 win over Tottenham Hotspur at Anfield, it also meant that the team won its second Premier League title and 20th top flight title to match Manchester United record of 20 titles. With former manager Jurgen Klopp being the last Liverpool manager to win the Premier League for the club, Dutchman Arne Slot became only the fifth manager to the Premier League title in their debut season with Liverpool’s win on Sunday. The 46-year-old has now revealed that Klopp was one of the first persons to message him post the win and Klopp remains the most famous person to message him post the win.
“I assume that’s Jurgen (Klopp). What did he have to say? What most of them said. So that was congratulations and now you know how special of a club it is, now you are part of the history as well – these kinds of things. He was really happy for me, for the players, for the staff, for the fans, like we all know Jurgen (would be). Maybe I forget a few but I think he was the most famous one,” said Slot when asked about the most famous person to message him post the title win on Friday.
The win saw Liverpool win the Premier League title with four matches to play this season. While Slot became the first Dutchman ever to manage a English Premier League team to the title, the Dutch manager also joined Jose Mourinho, Carlo Ancelotti, Manuel Pellegrini and Antonio Conte as the Premier League managers to have won the league title in their debut season. Liverpool currently has a 15-point difference between them and second placed Arsenal and if the team maintains the points gap till the end of the season, it will be only the fourth-biggest margin of title by a club in Premier League history. Liverpool will now face Chelsea at Stamford Bridge on Sunday followed by playing against Arsenal, Brighton and Crystal Palace later in the month and Slot sees playing the strong teams as a challenge. “It’s nice that we play some very strong teams with Chelsea, Arsenal, Brighton and [Crystal] Palace, so that gives immediately the challenge to those games. It’s the end of the season but we also have to look at this as the start of next season already. It’s Chelsea away first.
We played them earlier on in the season and I’m completely surprised, not shocked but surprised, if I look at the gap we have with them at the moment, because at that moment in time they were the better team on the pitch. But we found a way to win and that is a quality that we didn’t need a lot because mostly we were the better team on the pitch. But in the game we had to suffer more than any other game maybe. So to be so many points ahead of them is a big compliment for everyone here at this club,” said Slot.
Slot also dedicated the title win to the fans of the club, who got an opportunity for the first time to see their team win the Premier League. The last time Liverpool won the Premier League title was under Klopp and it was in front of an empty stadium with Covid restrictions. “There are so many things that have an influence on next season. Is it an advantage, yes or no, that some teams go to the Club World Cup? I think the main advantage of winning the league is that until now if I spoke to new players we wanted to bring in I always told them that our fans are really special [and] that it’s special to play at this club. I think that was not even necessary to tell them in the past but after Sunday I don’t think I ever have to tell anyone again how special our fans are because that was unbelievable,” said Slot.
