Over the years, the newspaper cutting has started to yellow with age. It has a rip down one side and, almost four decades since it was printed, its owner cannot be sure how the damage occurred.
Bert Snippe has just pulled up a chair and introduced himself as a former team-mate of Arne Slot’s father, Arend, from the village team, VV Bergentheim, whose story is intrinsically linked to Liverpool’s modern-day success.
Arend never played professionally but he was called up for the Dutch national amateur team. Mention his name in Bergentheim and the people who have seen him play all seem to be in agreement: he was the best footballer VV Bergentheim ever had.
But Arne wasn’t bad, either. In 1988, he and three of his team-mates were invited to a four-vs-four junior tournament 80 miles away at Zeist, headquarters of the Dutch football federation (KNVB).
Their progress was big news locally. “A week to remember — Bergentheim kids at KVNB centre,” read the headline in De Zwolse Courant.
The accompanying photograph showed the boys returning with their third-placed prize (a clock) to the clubhouse in Bergentheim. It was the first time Arne — nine years old, green tracksuit, thick brown hair — had featured in any newspaper. And for the last 37 years that cutting has been preserved in one of Bert’s photo albums.
“I remember each boy,” says Bert, tapping his finger on the photograph, one by one, to announce their roles. “He was the defender… this boy was the worker… this one was the killer who scored all the goals…”
And the fourth boy? That was Arne.
“He was the thinker.”
Arne Slot (third from left), aged nine, in a Dutch newspaper (Photo courtesy of Bert Snippe)
The thinker, now 46, is about to be confirmed as Anfield royalty.
If Liverpool beat Newcastle United at Wembley on Sunday, the Carabao Cup will be Slot’s first trophy since replacing Jurgen Klopp nine months ago. The Champions League has gone for another year but the Premier League title is a near-formality. Slot has been an inspired appointment and, five miles from the Dutch-German border, the people of Bergentheim have maybe the best understanding about how he developed his knowledge of football, coaching and, above all, winning.
More than once, Arne has talked publicly about his father’s influence, how it has shaped his own personality and the advice, or occasional criticism, he receives from Slot Sr before and after Liverpool’s big assignments.
“His father was a No 10,” says Snippe, 62. “He made a lot of goals and, in my eyes, he was the best player we ever had. But he was a very good coach, too, and Arne has taken a lot from him.
“From a very young age, Arne would sit beside his dad on the bench for every match. He would see, close-up, how his dad did it. Always learning, observing. Then, at half-time, Arne would go into the dressing room to listen to what was being said. The manager we see today with Liverpool, that story starts with Bergentheim. And it all comes back to his father.”
It’s Saturday afternoons when the clubhouse comes alive. Even if there are no games on, every chair is taken. The beer is cheap. The diary is packed with social events and competitions — Klaverjassen, Jokeren and other Dutch card games — and one side of the room is almost entirely filled with the trophies that have been accumulated over 80 years of existence.
VV Bergentheim is not your usual village team. The Sportpark Moscou complex has four pitches, surrounded by forests and farmland, immaculately trimmed hedgerows and more advertising boards than would ever normally be expected at this level. There are 27 teams — men, women and juniors from eight years up — and 750 members. One in five Bergentheim people, to put it another way, are signed up.
Enter the boardroom and there is a framed portrait of Arend on the left-hand wall. He was not just their best player, but also a highly successful manager in later years and now an honorary member. Big smile, twinkling eyes, shiny pate — the father-son resemblance is clear straight away.
A portrait of Arend Slot in the clubhouse at VV Bergentheim (Daniel Taylor/The Athletic)
“Put them together from the same age and they are like twins,” says Jan Ophof, Arne’s first coach for VV Bergentheim. “It’s all in their eyes. But also the way they talk, the way they act, their attitude. He (Arne) is a copy of his father. But what do you expect? As a child, Arne sat next to him in the dugout. So he heard his father talking all the time.”
He laughs. “Yes, also to the referee. Arne got that from him, too.”
In 1971, Ophof was a page boy, aged five, at the wedding of Arend and Fennie, a kindergarten teacher. As a toddler, they had been his babysitters. And when he grew older, like most of the boys in his village (and now the girls), he progressed through the different age-levels of VV Bergentheim.
After playing, he went into coaching. “My role was to train the boys aged 10 to 12. Arne was nine but his father had told him, ‘You are a good player, you can play a level higher’. So one evening this boy appeared in the dressing room. ‘Hello, I’m Arne, I’m here to train with you and I will work hard’. We trained for an hour and he was our best player. It was as if he had the ball on a string. ‘Trainer,’ he said, ‘can I come back?’ OK, you can come back.”
Ophof brings out an old team photograph that shows him lined up beside Arne and the other players in VV Bergentheim’s bottle-green kit.
Arne Slot (circled) next to Jan Ophof at VV Bergentheim (Photo courtesy of Jan Ophof)
“Arne was very intelligent for his age. He would come up to me and say, ‘Coach, can we do this? Can we do that?’ He wasn’t tall, he wasn’t fast, but he knew where to pass, where to move.
“We scored 22 goals in one game against a team from Ommen. Their coaches were really angry with us. ‘You guys are stupid’, they were shouting. ‘These are children, 10- to 12-year-olds’. But the attitude of our coaches was, ‘Again, again — next goal, next goal’. Arne scored 12 goals in that game from midfield.
“The only problem for us, his coaches, was that, if his father was at the side of the pitch, Arne looked more to his father than us. His father was the first-team coach. But he coached Arne, too. We’d say to Arne, ‘Why are you walking over there, Arne?’ And he would say, ‘Yeah, but my father wants to speak to me’.”
VV Bergentheim’s home ground (Daniel Taylor/The Athletic)
Arend was not just the local football coach. He also worked for many years as the headmaster of Bergentheim’s school, renowned for his strictness and the general rule that his word was final.
“It was the same with football,” says Snippe. “He was a strong personality. Whatever he said was right.”
And so, when Liverpool won 2-1 against Lille in the Champions League in January without playing brilliantly, guess who was on the phone to Arne the next day to complain that the team should have been more adventurous in its passing?
“He said it wasn’t as exciting as other games,” Arne later revealed to reporters. “I had to try to explain to him that in these games you can easily lose if you are starting to force all kinds of difficult balls. But (laughing) he’s not always agreeing with me.”
Arend has been described in his village as Bergentheim’s Louis van Gaal, another former teacher who could be blunt with his views, unapologetically forthright and firmly of the opinion that he knew best in any football conversation. And, like Van Gaal, Arend could divide opinion.
“I give him respect,” says Ophof. “but many old Bergentheim players… (would say) no. He was a strict trainer. School teachers are always right, aren’t they? Always! His way was the only way — the way he talked to everyone, he was always right. Like Van Gaal, like Rinus Michels, that kind of personality. He was too strict for some people.”
Has Arne inherited the same traits? Ophof says yes, absolutely. “Did you see him substitute (Mohamed) Salah in Liverpool’s first match against Paris Saint-Germain? Oof! Salah was not happy. But that’s Arne, too. ‘OK, Salah, you’re a good player, but you don’t play for me in every minute of every game — and I’m the boss’. Then he tells the players afterwards why he has done it — and why he was right.”
Snippe, regarded as one of VV Bergentheim’s best-ever players, remembers how Arend’s training sessions used to finish with an eight-v-eight match. Arend would play, too. The rule, says Snippe, was that “the game went on as long as it took for him to make the winning goal, and then we stopped”.
Arend Slot (back row, fourth from right) in a VV Bergentheim team photo (Daniel Taylor/The Athletic)
Arend, in his wife’s words, could be “grumpy for a week” after a bad result. And that sounds familiar, too, if you have been paying attention to Arne’s first season in English football.
“Did you see Arne’s red card against Everton for what he said to the referee?” says Snippe, who is planning a trip to Liverpool to see Arne’s team. “Not just that, but four or five yellow cards in other games. Hahaha.”
Three, actually. But his point remains the same. Slot received a two-match touchline ban for berating Michael Oliver — his alleged words being, “If we don’t win the league, I’ll f***ing blame you” — and Snippe’s laughter is of the seen-it-all-before variety.
“Everything has fallen in his favour for Arne this season, but if he has two or three weeks that are not so good — and I hope this doesn’t happen — maybe you will learn the real Arne Slot,” he says. “His dad was the same against every referee. Pap, pap, pap! These people (the Slots) want to win. It doesn’t matter what game — cards, soccer, whatever — they make the rules and they want to win.”
In Bergentheim, there are villagers who argue the Sportpark Moscou should be renamed in Arne’s honour.
Ophof is one of them. “If I was the chairman, I would make sure it happened straight away,” he says. “I’m very proud of Arne. The whole village is proud of him. When will we ever say again that a boy from Bergentheim has done what Arne has?”
VV Bergentheim’s Sportpark Moscou home (Daniel Taylor/The Athletic)
The club’s directors have decided against it, though. Arne never played for the men’s team, having left at the age of 12 to join the academy of PEC Zwolle, his first professional club. And, though the villagers are proud of his achievements, they prefer to see him as an ordinary guy, not a superstar or A-lister. No statue will go up. They are even planning to rename the Arne Slot Days, an annual event in which hundreds of kids participate in a three-day training camp.
Why change the name? Aligning it to Arne would, the club believe, bring media and outside attention. And, besides, who can be sure Liverpool’s manager has time in his busy schedule to pop in for a day or two?
A pity, though. Arend, 78, is still at most matches and, locally, they tell the story about how Arne, as an academy player with PEC Zwolle, agreed to play in a youth tournament for VV Bergentheim as long as it was kept hush-hush from his club.
In later years, he returned to Bergentheim and offered to coach one of the teams where one of his brothers played.
Gert Bullen was part of the same team. “Arne was some player,” he says, 20 years on. “He came along to coach us and his instruction was, ‘One touch, only one touch’. I told him it might be better for two touches. ‘No’, he said, ‘one touch’. It must have lasted about 20 seconds (laughing) before play broke down. ‘OK’, said Arne. ‘Two touches!’”
Arne Slot playing for PEC Zwolle in an Eredivisie match against Willem II in 2013 (VI Images via Getty Images)
Last year, the award-winning author James Worthy started writing a Dutch-language book, De eerste 100 dagen van Arne Slot (The first 100 days of Arne Slot), and, to get to know his subject better, rented a house in Bergentheim for three months.
He also posted a note in the supermarket to explain what he was writing and ask if anyone with Arne stories could give him a ring. But it took a while to get the trust of the locals and, for the first few weeks, his phone did not ring once. A colleague from the region had already warned him: “They are not going to talk to you, James.”
What he found was a village of extraordinary peace in a part of the Netherlands that is often described as the Dutch Bible Belt.
Bergentheim has a canal, a public swimming pool, a fire station, a small shopping precinct and a pub, Veenlust, that does not have pictures of Arne on its walls but does do exceedingly tasty croquettes. Otherwise, there is not a great deal for miles around other than fields and countryside, cattle and birdsong and the occasional row of thatched cottages.
“Does Arne miss Bergentheim sometimes?” says Worthy. “Without a doubt. It’s so peaceful in that village.
“When I look at Arne, I don’t see that the cities where he has lived have affected him yet. When I hear him talk, I don’t see paid-parking, day-trippers or unaffordable delicatessens. No, when I hear Arne Slot talk, I see a heron next to a canal, a magpie on an electricity pylon. I’ll go back (to Bergentheim). I’ve made memories and friends there.”
Ophof has lived here all his life. He likes to say he is responsible for “two per cent” of Slot’s rise (he is referring to pressing, which he placed a lot of emphasis on as a coach) and, briefly going off-topic, the 58-year-old explains the other big news in the village since the turn of the year.
“We have three churches in Bergentheim. The people here are very religious and there is no football on Sundays. Until recently, everything was closed on Sundays. Now, though, the supermarket is open on Sundays. It’s a miracle! For the last two months, a miracle. The owner of the supermarket announced it two years ago, but it has been a long process.”
And the village is OK with this decision? “I think so. No protests.”
This was Slot’s way of life until his move to Zwolle’s academy meant a new routine that involved a 15-minute bicycle ride out of Bergentheim to the railway station in Marienberg, followed by a 45-minute train journey to training or matches, then the same again to get home, six times a week.
He had to be dedicated, even at the age of 12, described by one local football scout as “the Bergkamp of Bergentheim”. And, always, his father was pushing him to make the most of his ability.
A young Arne Slot (circled) gets a team talk (Photo courtesy of Bert Snippe)
After a few years of this routine, Arne started a conversation with a girl who used to get the same train. That was Mirjam, his future wife. They have been together ever since and own a beautiful 19th-century townhouse in Zwolle’s city centre, overlooking a canal and the park, Ter Pelkwijkpark, where at this time of the year the crocuses and snowdrops jostle for space.
His parents, meanwhile, have remained in the semi-detached piece of suburbia where he grew up, with their name signposted at the front, a trophy visible in the bedroom window, red tulips in a pot at the front and five ornamental white doves beside a neatly trimmed lawn.
In May 2023, the couple opened their doors for a rare interview with Vincent de Vries, an acclaimed football writer for De Stentor newspaper. It was two days after their son had won the Eredivisie title with Feyenoord and Fennie, a year younger than her husband, cried tears of joy.
“Sometimes I really have to pinch myself,” she said. “I’m so proud of him. I’m also proud of Edwin, Jakko and Gerlinde, my three other children. But what Arne has achieved is so special — almost magical.”
Arend and Fennie Slot pose with the Dutch Eredivisie trophy at the family home (Freddy Schinkel)
The couple posed for pictures, looking through old photo albums and holding up the championship trophy. “Friends from Rotterdam have already warned us,” said Arend. “For the next four or five years, Arne won’t be able to walk through the city without a wig.”
In Bergentheim, 125 miles east, it is not like that. Arne is just Arne. That is the village’s charm: how normal and unpretentious it is. But Fennie, who is not a football fan, did tell De Vries she was taken aback, having popped into the Plus supermarket for her groceries, by the number of people who wanted to say hello and congratulate her.
Arend and Fennie Slot show off a scrapbook chronicling their son’s achievements (Freddy Schinkel)
De Vries also discovered the young Arne had placed a Feyenoord sticker on the window of the bedroom he shared with Jakko. The sticker was so tightly attached to the glass it was still there more than 30 years later.
Did Arend see himself in Arne? “Absolutely,” his father replied, beaming. They text before every game. “Do your best,” is Arend’s normal instruction. Arne’s thank-you message usually comes back straight away.
“Because my wife wanted some time for herself on Saturdays, I often took the boys with me to matches,” Arend explained in the same interview. “They were in the dressing room at every match. How quietly Arne sat there, in a corner, watching everything. I sometimes said, ‘Don’t you want to play outside, boy?’ No, he wanted to experience everything. He was six or seven.”
Photographs from that time show Arne in the school playground. Another shows him perched on a climbing frame. One is in the school gymnasium.
Arne Slot (circled) with schoolmates in Bergentheim (Photo courtesy of Bert Snippe)
Slot (circled) at the Bergentheim school gymnasium (Photo courtesy of Bert Snippe)
Slot (circled) on a climbing frame at school (Photo courtesy of Bert Snippe)
Arend, incidentally, is the Dutch word for ‘eagle’ and not a common name in the Netherlands.
It was, however, passed down to Arne — full name Arend Martijn Slot — and has Germanic derivation from the words meaning ‘rule’ and ‘power’. It feels apt.
Slot’s Liverpool are champions-in-waiting, preparing for Wembley, and maybe the people of Bergentheim know better than most where he gets his winning mentality. Relentless, driven and ultra-competitive — like father, like son.
(Top photos: Daniel Taylor, Getty Images, Freddy Schinkel and courtesy of Bert Snippe; design: Will Tullos)
