Arne Slot was given enormous shoes to fill when he took over from Jurgen Klopp as Liverpool’s head coach, but he has received only positivity from his predecessor.
As a now legendary figure in Liverpool’s history, Klopp’s opinion will forever carry weight for Liverpool supporters.
The German is keen not to put too much pressure on his successor, though, and has piled praise onto Slot while admitting he has faced some challenging obstacles in pre-season.
Speaking to ESPN, Klopp said: “We spoke one or two times [at the start].
“I think we texted a few more times but there is nothing I can tell him what he couldn’t know himself.
“Right now from my side, just to give positive feedback in the beginning because we are all human beings and he worked his socks off.
“I know that because the tour is super intense in a year when you have Euros and Copa (America), you don’t have the team together, but they come, you have one week until the first matchday and stuff like that.
“So I think he had a similar situation, but exactly the same situation? Definitely not.
“When I saw the games, that’s why I watched it, not to think, oh, how does it look? The work he did was obvious, the ideas obvious and that’s the best you can say about the coach.”
Klopp now watches the Reds as a supporter and enjoyed Liverpool’s showings in pre-season and against Ipswich.
He continued: “I liked his football a lot he played with Rotterdam (Feyenoord), so that’s really good.
“I saw now the Sevilla game, the pre-season friendly. Big parts of it were really good and the league game, the second half was obviously really good.
“But it’s not important that I like it, it’s just you can see he is a very good coach and the team, I know now better than most, is a really good squad, is a really good team. So it will work out really well.”
“I want him to do well, I want the club to do well. I want the players to do well.”
While Klopp was a figurehead at Anfield and influential across the club, he had nothing to do with the appointment of his successor and “was really happy when he heard Liverpool were going for Arne Slot.”
He explained: “I was not involved in anything, it should not be like that. I’m not like this kind of guy in the background still having some strings and stuff like this.
“I don’t want that, the club is too big, too good. The people are too good.
“A lot of things changed since we left but the only concern for me was, will they get a good coach?
“That’s a very big part of the decision and Liverpool was early and Liverpool got a top, top, top solution in Arne Slot.”
When Klopp sang the new coach’s name after his final match in May, it instantly gave supporters a boost of faith in Slot and that the future will be bright.
The early signs are good but like Klopp, Slot’s legacy won’t be dictated by his first-season accomplishments. This year is about how setting the Reds up for domination going forward.
