RED ALERT
Arne Slot tries his best not to choke up when he talks of last year’s meeting between Liverpool and PSG. “I hope every fan around the world was hoping this game wouldn’t stop because it was incredible,” he blubbed in March 2025. His team had just lost on penalties to the soon-to-be Bigger Cup winners. “It was the best game of football that I was ever involved in.” If the Slot regime comes to its end this summer, with a significant groundswell of opinion among Kopites nodding in that direction, then it is curious he keeps returning to an infamous European night at Anfield which may well prove the beginning of the end. A few days later, Liverpool deservedly lost a Fizzy Cup final to a much more inspired Newcastle. Things have never quite been the same since, despite a 20th league title being claimed in April.
Slot will always have Paris. “My football is Paris Saint-Germain v Liverpool, Liverpool v Paris Saint-Germain,” Slot cooed after Fulham’s Harrison Reed had scored a last-minute equaliser against his team in January. “That is how I would love to have every single game, but you need to have two teams to have an open game of football and not all these things that don’t make a game of football nice.” On Wednesday, Slot will doubtless be wearing his best Harrington jacket and splashing on the Lynx Africa when Liverpool return to Paris for a Bigger Cup rekindling of his ecstatic romance. He could barely contain himself after beating Galatasaray in the last 16 set up the reunion, mooning: “I’ve said many times that it was the best game I’ve managed in my career, even though we lost, in terms of how it was played with both teams playing football the way it should be played and wanting to entertain the fans.”
Problematically for Slot and Liverpool, a fortnight widely previewed as two weeks to relaunch the Reds began with that FA Cup performance at Manchester City. Liverpool were playing quite well, Curtis Jones so full of confidence he was showing off his best back-heels and lollipops. Then Virgil van Dijk chopped down Nico O’Reilly. From that moment, disaster followed and once Erling Haaland had made it 4-0 in the 57th minute, much of the away contingent were heading for the Etihad stairways.
The sight of Dominik Szoboszlai, the one player whose performance levels have sustained, giving it the big one back to unhappy fans, was unhelpful to say the least. Then again, so were the performances of Szoboszlai’s teammates, with Van Dijk’s trademark cool reduced to Coldplay levels and Mohamed Salah looking less the sixth-best player in Liverpool history than the 6,000th. Not all is blamed on Slot, with club suits similarly low in the popularity ratings, but submission at City was a prime example of his team being a soft touch. “You shouldn’t give up,” wailed Van Dijk. To Wednesday: Slot getting fluttery again? Down and out in Paris and Liverpool?
LIVE ON BIG WEBSITE
Join Yara El-Shaboury at 8pm BST for Bigger Cup updates on Sporting 1-1 Arsenal in the first leg of their quarter-final, while Rob Smyth will be on hand at the same time for Real Madrid 1-2 Bayern Munich.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“You can’t shake this new habit of always looking around. I’m more careful and hide more when I’m changing before games and after games. More widely I’m more careful too – when I go to a public pool it’s not like it was before, I try to not expose myself too much even when I’m in a private cubicle” – FC Slovacko’s Kristyna Janku reflects on the aftershocks from learning her former coach Petr Vlachovsky had been caught secretly filming in the women’s team’s dressing room for four years.
FOOTBALL DAILY LETTERS
With Aaron Ramsey having been without a club since the end of last year and now retiring, it looks like we’ve moved from players announcing their retirement who we weren’t even aware were still playing to players announcing their retirement who were already retired but weren’t aware of it themselves” – Noble Francis.
Dear Arsenal, how do you sustain this insane consistency in blowing your chances? Every. Single. Time. Players come and go. Managers stay and leave. The only constant is the fans’ anguish. What wizardry will you wield now to hand over the title to Manchester City?” – Krishna Moorthy.
Re Thursday’s letters. John Groom is correct that not many Aussies use flamin’, but you don’t have to be Stefan Kuntz, Danny Sh1ttu or Christian Fuchs to know our modern alternatives aren’t always printable” – Rowan Sweeney.
No-one says flamin’ anymore John, but most of us still have a flamin’ sense of humour” – Greg Wyatt.
If you have any, please send letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s prizeless letter o’ the day winner is … Rowan Sweeney. Terms and conditions for our competitions, when we run them, are here.
RECOMMENDED LOOKING
Our resident cartoonist, David Squires, on the shocks and flops from the FA Cup quarter-finals.
RECOMMENDED LISTENING
Listen up! It’s Max Rushden, Barry Glendenning and the rest of the Football Weekly pod squad with a look back at the weekend’s news and action. And you can watch the pod here if you like that kind of thing.
The latest Women’s Football Weekly has also dropped, with Faye Carruthers, Suzy Wrack, Tom Garry and Anne-Marie Batson assessing the FA Cup quarter-finals and a dramatic run-in at both ends of the WSL 2 table.
RECOMMENDED ORDERING
We’ll be giving away copies of the Classic Football Shirts book soon. To get you in the mood, here’s a clip of Big Website’s visit to the shop in Manchester and some chat about Jorge Campos. You’ve got to love that retro polyester. And if you want to pre-order a copy from the Guardian Bookshop, you can do so here.
This is an extract from our daily football email … Football Daily. To get the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions.
