Arne Slot admits he needs to calm down as the Liverpool boss prepares to serve his touchline ban on Wednesday night at Southampton.
Slot has been banished to the stands for one game because he clocked up his third booking against Fulham on Saturday in addition to his yellow cards in the Chelsea and Arsenal matches. Although Slot is not hyper like Jurgen Klopp was on the touchline, he does get emotional and he says he needs to remember where the line is when his feelings boil over.
“You always reflect, but I think in general I’m calm,” said the Liverpool head coach. “But there is also a limit for me, let’s put it that way, and then I can get emotional and unfortunately that limit is only reached by refereeing decisions or the decisions my players make. They make more good decisions than the referees do in my opinion for my team!
“The Chelsea game was emotional. We should have had a second penalty, but the VAR changed it. In the Fulham game, there were a lot of controversial decisions being made and then if you are down to 10 men that works out even harder [on you]. The Chelsea game and this game were emotional and maybe I should have stayed just underneath the line instead of going above it.”
Slot is calm and controlled on the touchline for 99 per cent of the time and he says it is important to have passion as a coach. The Dutchman says he is learning he can’t influence officials by adopting an us-against-the-world mentality.
“I think it’s clear if you work in a club like this, or around the world at a top club, you have this fire inside you that you want to win every game and you try to influence things as much as you can,” he said. “The mistake I’ve made two times already here, and one or two times in Holland, is sometimes you think that creating an atmosphere that the whole world is against you can lead to some positive decisions at the end of the game.
“But in the Chelsea game and the Fulham game for the whole 90 minutes it stayed the same. It wasn’t like after I tried to influence things a bit the referee all of a sudden gave us one or two free kicks.
“No, he just kept the whole game the same. “I know that it doesn’t work, but sometimes you think ‘can I influence that a bit?’. But it didn’t help at all.”
Slot says his punishment is not as severe as it would be in Holland because he can still talk to his players before kick-off and go into the dressing room at half-time. “If you’re suspended in Holland then you’re not allowed to be in and around the dressing room and you cannot do media as well,” he said. “So this is a lighter version of it.
“I think I’m still able to do the things that I want to do. The least impact you have on the team is during the 45 minutes and the most you can have is half-time or before the game, and those are the things I can do. In an ideal situation I would be on the sideline, but I got a yellow, which I probably deserved.”
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