Culture
What I learnt meeting Arne Slot: charismatic, innovative – but a big bet by Liverpool
When, as expected, Arne Slot arrives at Liverpool’s training centre this summer, he will find at least one amenity perfectly to his taste. Slot is among the growing cast of top-level individuals in football hooked on padel, the high-paced racket sport that lands somewhere between tennis and squash.
At Feyenoord’s training base in the Dutch city of Rotterdam, chief executive Dennis Te Kloese promised Slot the club would install a padel court — on the condition they won the league title. Slot made them Eredivisie champions last season, and the padel court soon followed.
It means there is at least one shared trait between Slot and his Anfield predecessor Jurgen Klopp; the German has his own court at Liverpool’s training centre, competing against members of his backroom staff and calling padel “the best game I’ve ever played” (apart from football).
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Football’s biggest stars are in love with padel. Why?
After Liverpool and Feyenoord agreed terms for Slot to replace Klopp this summer, many Liverpool fans wondered quite what to make of it and how well-suited the 45-year-old Dutchman is to replacing the club’s most popular and successful manager of the Premier League era. As ever, hasty opinions form, often conditioned by framing.
On the one hand, Slot is one of only two Feyenoord managers to win the title this century and he became the first coach to take the club beyond the group stage in a European competition since 2015, reaching the inaugural final of the Europa Conference League in 2022 and the Europa League quarter-finals last season in parallel to claiming the domestic championship.
He won that title despite retaining only four players from his starting line-up in that Conference League final. Sales from that side raised €70million (£59.9m at the current exchange rate) in fees, and just over 40 per cent of that was reinvested as Feyenoord pursued financial sustainability after too many years of financial mismanagement. Of their 12 permanent signings, not one was aged 24 or over.
This season, while again recording a positive net spend, Feyenoord are going to finish as runners-up, second to a freakish performance from PSV Eindhoven (who have won 27 and drawn three of their 31 league games so far), and will beat last season’s points tally of 82 if they win their last three matches. They won the Dutch equivalent of the FA Cup final just over a week ago.
This version of the story, therefore, is largely of consistent development and excellence.
Slot kisses the Eredivisie champions’ trophy (Olaf Kraak/ANP/AFP via Getty Images)
Others, however, may take an alternative framing. They may question if Liverpool are taking an almighty gamble on a man who has only five seasons of experience as a head coach, all of which have been in the Netherlands, outside of European football’s elite, and one of which was in his homeland’s second division.
Slot has coached only one campaign in the group stage of the Champions League, winning two of six games against Atletico Madrid, Lazio and Celtic, and losing the rest to fail to progress into the knockout phase.
In almost three full seasons as Feyenoord manager, Slot has never lost consecutive league games, which is incredibly impressive, but means there is no evidence-base for how he may handle the longer periods of difficulty which are more likely in the fiercely-competitive Premier League, even with a club among its elite.
At Feyenoord, no player recruited for Slot exceeded the €9million initial fee spent on Japanese striker Ayase Ueda from Belgian side Cercle Bruges last summer, and the highest player wage is believed to be around €40,000 a week. At Liverpool, he will inherit players such as Alisson and Virgil van Dijk, who were signed for eight-time multiples of Ueda, while Mohamed Salah earns £350,000 a week.
It all serves to underline the comparative dimensions of Liverpool and the potential culture-shock of what’s expected to be his new job; where man-management as well as coaching will be crucial.
Liverpool have over 37 times more followers on X, formerly Twitter, than Feyenoord’s 649,000; the media demands, global interest and revenues all dwarf those at his current club. The former Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher, writing in the UK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper after the Slot news broke, said: “For the last nine years, Liverpool have possessed one of the top two managers in the world. They are now gambling on the next big thing rather than appointing a proven, real deal.”
The truth is nobody can predict with certainty how any manager may fare at a new club but what we can do is consider some of the factors that may have persuaded Liverpool.
Last summer, The Athletic was provided with a window into Slot’s Feyenoord kingdom, receiving a full day of behind-the-scenes access. And on that day he was truly king of the castle, because Feyenoord had just clinched the title and it corresponded with the day he signed a new contract, having rejected the opportunity to join Tottenham Hotspur, who went on to appoint Ange Postecoglou. He has also remained faithful when two more Premier League clubs, Leeds United and Crystal Palace, came knocking earlier in the calendar year.
Our trip to Rotterdam included more than seven hours of interviews with Slot, CEO Te Kloese and their head of sporting strategy Matt Wade, as well as extensive time with their scouting team and performance staff. It was a 360-degree examination of a club who had dramatically reformed their structure and performance, and offered rare insight into a man upon whom Liverpool’s incoming sporting director Richard Hughes and Michael Edwards, the club’s former sporting director back after two years away in a new role as owner Fenway Sports Group’s CEO of football, are now preparing to stake their reputations.
Slot is popular with his players (Broer van den Boom/BSR Agency/Getty Images)
As for initial impressions, Slot appeared charismatic. But maybe you would be pretty affable too when you have just signed a new contract — a deal which removed a €5million release clause from his previous deal, which would have otherwise come into play this summer. That left Feyenoord able to negotiate last week anywhere between €11million and €15m out of Liverpool, depending on which club’s briefings of their final agreement that you choose to believe.
His grasp of English is easier on the ears and more lucid than his compatriot Erik ten Hag, who has sometimes struggled to convey the necessary charisma to both players and supporters in his near two seasons as Manchester United manager. And there were times, when Slot spoke, where the meaning behind his words could easily have come out of Klopp’s mouth.
When explaining why he had chosen to remain at Feyenoord, he talked of the need to “cherish what you have” within an environment, taking pleasure from the way you work and those you work alongside. He said success ought not to be measured by prizes alone. This, however, was tinged with a sense of realism that will be required at Liverpool. At one point he quipped: “If a coach only talks about the process, then nine out of 10 times, the results are bad.”
He talked of not wanting to be perceived as somebody who passes through, but as somebody who weaves a legacy into a club. He appeared genuinely touched when I told him how, during the previous evening, I had met a Feyenoord fan who credited Slot for not only winning more points than Ajax, Amsterdam’s 36-time Dutch champions, but allowing that supporter to believe for the first time that his team played prettier football than their arch-rivals, a club so closely connected with the ‘total football’ concept.
When he discussed what he seeks from his players, Slot said he initially “emphasised players who are not maybe the best in the world, but who brought energy to the team and also to the stadium”. It is an ingredient which may be needed at Anfield, where the home team feed off the adrenaline shots being pumped out from the stands. He wanted to know how his players conveyed themselves in the media, because that, he said, contributes to the culture.
Liverpool’s academy has proven fertile ground this season, as Klopp promoted talents including Conor Bradley, Jarell Quansah, Bobby Clark and Jayden Danns. Expect that to continue under his successor. Slot awarded 12,334 minutes to academy talent in the season Feyenoord won the league. During our visit, he reflected, “Youth players in your first team give energy. And if people feel they can grow inside the club, that drives the culture. I don’t believe that much in experience; I believe more in game intelligence, and young players can have much more than an older player.” He said this mindset, where anybody can progress, should extend beyond the dressing room, citing how Frank Boer, a former marketing department intern at the club, had gone on to become their team-manager, overseeing player care.
As with Klopp, he demonstrates empathy and care for younger generations. He looks with concern rather than bitterness towards the smartphone generation. “It’s much more difficult nowadays to play football,” Slot said. “Social media, being judged by everyone; more negative than it was in my day. And these guys now need to be so much fitter — really top athletes. So, yes, a big chance to earn a lot of money, but the pressure is higher than it was 20 years ago.”
The data says that Slot’s training sessions, with drills often devised by his assistant Sipke Hulshoff, motivate his players. The playing and training availability of squad members hit 90 per cent in each of his first two full seasons at the club. Leigh Egger, one of the club’s performance leads, said: “The training sessions are constantly changing. They hit the sweet spot of overload, tactics and physical demand. It makes our job in performance easier, because the players really want to train all the time. You see it also with the substitutes, who may have every right to be disappointed at not playing, but our training availability is so high because the sessions are stimulating and really fun, from a footballing regard.” Hulshoff, who is also in the backroom staff of the Dutch national team, is Slot’s first assistant on a matchday, and often seen in the dugout.
Slot wants his environment to be positive and favourable. He listens and collaborates, traits which cannot always be taken for granted at the highest level of sport. There is a system of fines for players, including for being late to a game or missing a team bus, but he is not a disciplinarian by nature. He does not see his role, or those of his staff, as akin to schoolteachers but rather to provide information, and give players every opportunity to make the healthiest choices.
One of Slot’s colleagues said they never once heard him raise his voice at the training ground.
Te Kloese, the CEO, said: “His player management is very unique — humane and thoughtful. He gives players a clear game plan, so players feel safe under him.” Players have often been heard speaking to one another after a game, saying how the action unfolded exactly how Slot had predicted, and how his instructions helped them overcome opponents.
Yet Slot’s success does not exist in a vacuum. It required uniformity of vision.
“Topsport”, as Feyenoord describe their culture, is applied across the club, which means consistency across the senior squad, the medical and performance teams and the academy. Under Liverpool’s sporting-director model, albeit with Edwards sitting at the top, the club want the person who’ll be their head coach, not manager, next season to co-exist within this framework, and at Feyenoord, Slot has demonstrated a willingness to do that.
The most successful clubs these days have departments across the board who communicate and support one another, rather than operating as separate siloed operations. In the case of recruitment, therefore, we know Liverpool leaned heavily on their data and research analysts during Edwards’ reign as sporting director, with the data operation identifying the potential of then Roma forward Salah to excel in the Premier League, even after a difficult period at Chelsea earlier in his career.
Hulshoff, right, is Slot’s top assistant and also works with Ronald Koeman and the Dutch national team (Olaf Kraak/ANP/AFP via Getty Images)
As Klopp grew more successful and powerful at Liverpool, his personal grip on recruitment became stronger, but while the club will welcome input from a head coach, they would like to simplify the role and allow that person to concentrate on the demanding bread and butter of developing players, preparing a team and selecting the line-up for the next match.
None of which means recruitment teams and a head coach should be in conflict. Rather, if it works how it has at Feyenoord, the scouts and analysts spend time with the coach, study his setup and firmly understand his style of play. Then they have a prescription for the type of players needed for the coach to excel, and so go off and work to identify options.
What Liverpool would wish to avoid is relying on the knowledge base of a coach, as rivals United appear to have done at times under Ten Hag, who has consistently looked to the Dutch market with which he is most familiar, as well as at players he has coached before, when it comes to signings.
At Feyenoord, Slot is invited into recruitment meetings and asked his opinion. Often, he has agreed with the evidence presented to him. There were times he suggested players he coached elsewhere, or made some pretty obvious suggestions from rival clubs such as PSV. There were other times he would swiftly decline options presented by scouts, based on a limited amount of video footage. None of which are automatically negative things — Lisandro Martinez, for example, has proven to be a fine signing for United having played for Ten Hag at Ajax. Yet when Feyenoord made signings, even if the one who came in would not always be his first preference, Slot never held a grudge against the players concerned and devoted all his time and energy to maximising their talent.
At Feyenoord, he has learnt to trust the scouting department, who strongly proposed the defender David Hancko after one scout had followed him from the academy of Slovakian club Zilina since his teenage years, with the player soon becoming integral for Slot. They then unearthed a $4million striker in Santiago Gimenez from Mexican side Cruz Azul and Slot’s confidence in the club’s deal-making, led by Te Kloese, was underlined when the CEO’s contacts in Mexico enabled him to beat clubs such as Porto and Benfica to Gimenez.
Slot has turned Gimenez into one of the most wanted players in Europe (ANP via Getty Images)
Signed in July 2022, Gimenez became Slot’s top goalscorer and the 23-year-old will this summer be one of the most in-demand young forwards in Europe. Other players, such as Mats Wieffer and Igor Paixao, emerged from the second divisions in the Netherlands and Brazil — Wieffer is now a full Dutch international and Paixao scored Feyenoord’s winner in that recent cup final.
Christos Akkas, a Feyenoord scout, said: “The coach was very specific about what he wants to play and we were able to capture from a data perspective, from a scouting perspective, but also from a mental, physical, technical, tactical perspective, exactly how he wants to play. And then the club set some rules. So we never sign an older or more expensive player than the one who is being replaced. Then we narrow down our search and, within that range, find the most suitable player.”
As Slot’s style of play requires intense levels of fitness and high cognitive ability — Akkas said players have commented how much thought is required on the pitch — scouts would leave no stone unturned. In some cases, this meant following potential recruits to their homes, to see what time the lights went off in the evening. This was particularly important because Rotterdam is a city of nightlife attractions, so there was little use in them signing a party-animal when intellectual and physical endurance is required every day.
As for the football, Slot does not disguise that he admires Pep Guardiola. There are traits that mirror much of what we have seen from Manchester City under the Spaniard, particularly the ferocious pressing to recover the ball and possession-based build-up.
In one of his first team meetings at Feyenoord after joining in summer 2021, he told his players that the Champions League final between Chelsea and Manchester City a few weeks earlier produced so few chances (a combined three shots on target) because of the defensive work applied by forwards on both teams.
On the ball, he likes his right-backs to drift into midfield, so expect Trent Alexander-Arnold to continue in that role, because Slot’s teams tend to build up with three men in defence and two in midfield, even if the starting formation is more of a back four. Each season, he has slightly modified how his team build out from the back, so as not to become predictable.
Alexander-Arnold’s ‘midfield’ role is unlikely to change (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)
In central midfield, he likes players who make “depth runs” — fast, explosive moves from deep which can penetrate opposing defences. Midfielder Orkun Kokcu, now with Benfica, needed to physically adapt to increase his explosiveness over the first few yards during his time at Feyenoord, even getting a gym installed at home, where he would receive regular text messages from Slot asking for updates on his progress.
Then there are the wingers, who he wants to isolate in one-on-one duels. This is why he brings his full-backs into central areas in the first place — to crowd the middle of the pitch, dragging opponents in to create one-on-one scenarios for those wide men. He said: “If you look at Roberto De Zerbi at Brighton, or Napoli (as they won the Serie A title last season, under Luciano Spalletti), or Man City or ourselves, we’ve got wingers who dominate these situations and that is what you need. That’s why I asked Dennis (Te Kloese, the CEO) at the beginning of the season for a lot of wingers, because you can’t expect every winger to perform in every single game and outplay their opponents. So that’s why they are the players substituted most often.”
At Liverpool, where Edwards and Hughes have strong reputations for identifying talent and deal-making, Slot should be prepared to delegate on signings.
It is not only within the field of recruitment where Slot has shown a preparedness to buy in. Feyenoord’s director of medical and performance Stijn Vandenbroucke has worked in his field for over two decades and he gushed as he described how the coach had complemented the club’s overall vision, all of which meant Feyenoord regularly excelled on “physical parameters, injury availability, winning games and physically outworking the opposition” — some pretty useful traits for a football club.
Vandenbroucke detailed the club’s approach to combining biological, psychological and social needs of players, to aid the individual and the team’s overall development.
Take, for instance, the case of striker Gimenez, where Slot was prepared to take a medium-term view after he arrived from Mexico.
When Feyenoord look at possible signings, they not only have their scouts observe the player, but the club’s performance and medical departments, too. Sometimes, the football staff will flag limiting factors that should be improved by the performance team (strength or speed, for example) and on other occasions, as was the case with Gimenez, the observations can come from the performance end. For Gimenez, they analysed his running style and noted he needed more “control around his trunk and pelvis” to avoid injuries and physically compete at the highest level. The observations are based on screenings of a player’s movement patterns, in-game and on the training field.
Vandenbroucke said: “We came to a conclusion that we needed a few months to get him (Gimenez) up and running. Arne agreed and he is the only manager I’ve ever worked with who would do that. It meant accepting we cannot play him from the start of the game because we needed the time to put more into him to get the output in the later stage of the season.”
Gimenez therefore started only five games in his 2022-23 debut season before club football paused in the November for the World Cup held in Qatar during the northern hemisphere’s winter. The plan went so smoothly that, after the tournament, he started 20 of Feyenoord’s final 21 Eredivisie and Europa League matches, scoring in 12 of them and finishing as their 20-goal top scorer.
Klopp has at times shown patience of his own, most notably taking time to bed Fabinho and Andy Robertson into his Liverpool team after they were signed.
Slot was sufficiently secure in his own skin that he allowed the club to bring in a sports psychologist, Dan Abrahams, to help the players overcome the mental block that had prevented Feyenoord winning away to fierce rivals Ajax since 2005. Abrahams supported the team in this challenge, culminating in a 3-2 away victory in March 2023, and their superiority over Ajax was reaffirmed this season with a 4-0 win in Amsterdam last September and a 6-0 romp in Rotterdam this month.
Feyenoord’s superiority in that away game was such that Ajax’s fans forced play to be halted by throwing flares onto the field.
Slot believes in the science. His performance experts suggested that the players should seek to adapt their lives to revolve around upcoming kick-off times. For example, if Feyenoord are due to play a game starting at 9pm on a Friday, then the staff and Slot will make clear to the players via a text message that they should not be asleep at that hour on the previous evening and should be active, to avoid their circadian rhythm making them flat on matchday. The Feyenoord backroom team were tight-knit, both together and with the players, and it will be interesting to see how and if this can be replicated at a bigger club.
He is seeking to bring one of his heads of performance, Ruben Peeters, with him to Liverpool, along with Hulshoff. He has tried and failed to convince Marino Pusic, formerly an assistant at Feyenoord, to be on his Anfield staff because he only joined Shakhtar Donetsk as their head coach last October and wishes to remain in that job.
In Hulshoff and Peeters, Slot will have allies who would seek to replicate the high-performance environment I witnessed in motion at Feyenoord. Yet he is going to need more help. He will need patience from above when results inevitably do not always go to plan and the scorching spotlight of life in the Premier League life burns bright, he will need expertise from the club’s recruitment department and, most crucially, he will need to secure buy-in from players of a profile and reputation that is of another scale to what he has experienced so far in his brief managerial career.
With Slot, the ideas and smarts appear to be there — a modern coach for a modern structure; it is now up to him to make the leap and up to Liverpool to produce an environment in which he can truly thrive.
(Top photo: NESimages/Herman Dingler/DeFodi Images via Getty Images)
This article is part of the “Beyond the Track” series, a dive on the surrounding scene, glamour and culture that makes a Grand Prix.
LAS VEGAS — A dash of dancing fountains, a sprinkle of star power supplied by a collection of celebrity chefs, and even something to chase it all down with champagne. Welcome to the Bellagio Fountain Club, a perfect recipe of the trappings the Las Vegas Grand Prix offers that makes it the most unique race on the Formula One calendar.
At first taste, a who’s who of chefs coming together just hours before qualifying might be hard to swallow. Ah, not so, says Wolfgang Puck, explaining there are parallels between performing at a high level on the track and concocting a gourmet meal in the kitchen.
“A restaurant is exactly the same as a Formula One team. Both are like an orchestra,” Puck told The Athletic. “It’s exactly the same. Because everybody has to work together and everybody has to help each other. You have to really bring it on because it is also all about timing. In a restaurant, if you have three or four different stations and one order has this or that and you have five different dishes coming out for one table, you can’t have them all coming at the same time. So it’s organization and a lot of training.”
Puck is no F1 novice; he closely followed the European-centric sport as a boy in Austria. Naturally, his favorite driver was fellow Austrian Niki Lauda, who later became a good friend. The mere mention of the three-time world champion’s name causes Puck to smile, with him immediately reminiscing about watching Lauda race whenever F1 visited the street circuit in Long Beach, Calif.
Back then, Puck was a rising chef, on the precipice of becoming one of the first chefs to crossover into the mainstream culture, while Lauda was already recognized as an F1 legend. A friendship was formed, and each time Puck attends a grand prix, it brings back a flood of memories of watching races around the globe.
“A restaurant is exactly the same as a Formula One team. Both are like an orchestra,” celebrity chef and F1 fan Wolfgang Puck says. (Christopher Trim / Cal Sport Media via AP Images)
Puck was also here a year ago attending the inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix, and he is wowed by how this race became an event, a word he emphasizes because how can a setting like this — the famed Bellagio fountains behind him, and a purposely constructed street circuit that winds through Las Vegas’ famous landmarks — be a mere race.
“I think (the grand prix) shows Las Vegas really in a good way because they race at night,” Puck said. “I really think it’s really an amazing thing to finally have it here. People can come from all over the world. There are more hotel rooms so close by, like I go to the Formula One in Budapest and they have very few hotel rooms, you have to stay 50 miles away in a little donkey hotel. Then, you need to get out of the parking lot. Like this year, we waited two-and-a-half hours to get out of the parking lot. That doesn’t happen here.”
Although champagne toasts and caviar dishes have always been synonymous with the globetrotting sport that races in exotic locales, there is no denying that F1 is presented much differently than it was even five years ago.
Propelled by the “Drive to Survive” effect, the boost in U.S. interest in the sport often credited to the Netflix docuseries, races have become such a spectacle that a gathering like this one featuring nearly 20 name chefs doesn’t feel out of place on a grand prix weekend.
And just as Puck is an example of a more traditional F1 fan, another attendee here represents the other side of the spectrum.
“My daughter. All my daughter,” Mark Wahlberg said, explaining how he discovered F1.
Like so many, “Drive to Survive” was the entry point for Grace Wahlberg becoming infatuated with the sport. In particular, she was drawn to McLaren teammates Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri. Before too long, her newfound interest piqued her father’s own curiosity, eventually leading to Mark, the famed actor, pulling some strings so that Grace could get the chance to sit inside one of Norris’ older cars.
“She has a big crush on two of the guys, Oscar and Lando, and so she wanted to meet them,” Mark Wahlberg told The Athletic. “So me being a dad who likes to make things happen for my kids, I figured out how I could track Lando down and get a car sent to the house. It was cool for us to be able to spend some time together and enjoy something.”
How did actor Mark Wahlberg get into F1? “All my daughter,” he says. Daughter Grace is a fan of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri. (Christopher Trim / Cal Sport Media via AP Images)
Donnie Wahlberg nods his head and smiles as his younger brother describes how he got into F1. It’s the kind of nod that implies, “I told you so,” because Donnie has long been a fan, discovering the sport and learning its intricacies when they toured Europe during the heyday of the boy band New Kids on the Block.
Donnie has lots of opinions on F1 but little time now to express them all. He has to jet to meet his wife. But before he departs, he wants to make one thing known: He loves Michael Schumacher. And while the debate among fans of who is better often centers on Schumacher, Ayrton Senna or Lewis Hamilton, Donnie leans in a different direction. His vote: Max Verstappen is the GOAT.
Mark gives his own smile as Donnie makes his point, though he prefers not to wade into the debate. Maybe Mark’s devotion to McLaren isn’t quite yet to the level of Grace’s or Donnie’s, though it doesn’t appear far off. Nor is his support mere lip service, instead it comes from a genuine place. He may be here at the Bellagio supporting his other brother Paul, a chef who’s worked in the restaurant industry since he was a teenager, but he’s also here because he’s a fan happy to be immersing himself in the event.
And here on a Friday afternoon atop a structure purposely built so fans could watch cars speed down Las Vegas Boulevard, F1 fans old and new intermingle. The event is all anyone is talking about.
“It’s a global event now,” Puck said. “Back then, Americans didn’t know Formula One. It wasn’t that popular. It’s not like today.”
The Beyond the Track series is part of a partnership with Chanel.
The Athletic maintains full editorial independence. Partners have no control over or input into the reporting or editing process and do not review stories before publication.
GO DEEPER
‘Perfect marriage of speed and glamour’: How Vegas becomes F1’s celebrity magnet
(Top photo: Jordan Bianchi / The Athletic)
Culture
NFL Week 12 roundtable: Giants’ QB plan post-Jones, NFC West race, is Bo Nix legit OROY contender?
You can officially count the New York Giants among the teams whose offseason will be built around finding its next franchise quarterback.
Daniel Jones’ being benched and then released is just one development highlighting league happenings leading up to Sunday’s Week 12 action. The Giants host the Tampa Bay Buccaneers with fan favorite Tommy DeVito in line to start.
Elsewhere in this week’s roundtable, our NFL writers Mike Sando, Zak Keefer and Jeff Howe discuss the NFC West. Could it be the league’s most fascinating division title race?
What about the Offensive Rookie of the Year race? Is the Denver Broncos’ Bo Nix (or another rookie quarterback) closing in on the Washington Commanders’ Jayden Daniels? Though Anthony Richardson has redeemed himself in Indianapolis, how will he and the Colts fare against the buzz saw that is the Detroit Lions? The 11-point favorite Kansas City Chiefs — sans Taylor Swift — visit Charlotte and the Carolina Panthers for the first time in eight years. The Harbaugh Bowl caps off Week 12 on Monday night, too.
Read more on what’s catching our writers’ attention this week.
The Daniel Jones era is over as the Giants host the Bucs. What’s next for Jones? What does the Giants’ plan at quarterback look like this offseason?
Howe: They tried to move up for a top QB in April, and I’d expect a similar effort — if not a more concerted one — this spring. The Giants are still in contention for the No. 1 pick, so they might get their choice of QBs, but the race has primarily been focusing on Cam Ward and Shedeur Sanders. There isn’t a marquee prospect in this class, though, and there are personnel executives who have already said they wouldn’t rank any of the 2025 QBs ahead of the six first-rounders from April. The Giants, like every QB-desperate team, should be aggressive, but they can’t force it. As for Jones, he’ll enter the camp competition vortex for teams that aren’t able to find a starting-caliber QB in the draft. It’s recently worked for the likes of Baker Mayfield, Sam Darnold and Russell Wilson, so I’d highly recommend a friendly offensive system.
GO DEEPER
2025 NFL Draft order projections: Cowboys, Bears tumbling toward top-10 picks
Sando: Jones projects as a backup somewhere, possibly with a team that has playoff aspirations and could stand to upgrade behind its starter. The Miami Dolphins are only 4-6, but they could use an upgrade behind Tua Tagovailoa. The Arizona Cardinals have Clayton Tune. Tampa Bay has Kyle Trask. The Minnesota Vikings have Nick Mullens. Maybe those teams love their backups, but I could see teams in their situations considering Jones.
As for the Giants, who will be making the decisions there? How high will their draft choice be? Which veterans might be available? It’s just way too early to know what the Giants are going to do, based on all the important unknown variables. They need to find a veteran able to start and possibly develop so they aren’t too dependent on their next drafted QB — especially in 2025, which doesn’t look like the best year for drafting at the position.
Keefer: Jones is going to make a lot of money in this league as a capable backup somewhere, removed from the expectations that come with being a franchise guy. I can’t see a team — barring an unforeseen injury — rolling with him as the starter in Week 1 next season. Not after what he’s put on tape the last two seasons. And the Giants will find themselves this spring backed into one of the worst corners in football: needing a quarterback in a draft that doesn’t feature a lot of quarterback talent. That’s caused teams to reach in the past, and it’s burned them for decades. New York would be wise to go the veteran route before the draft just to be safe. I wonder whether the prospect of Justin Fields taking over would get Giants fans excited.
Daniel Jones was benched Monday after the New York Giants’ 2-8 start to the season, during which he completed 63.3 percent of his passes for 2,070 yards, eight touchdowns and seven interceptions through 10 games. (Mario Hommes / DeFodi Images via Getty Images)
The Broncos, on the road against the Las Vegas Raiders on Sunday, are in the thick of the AFC playoff hunt. Is Bo Nix (or another rookie QB) a legitimate Offensive Rookie of the Year contender or is it still Jayden Daniels’ award to lose?
Howe: It’s Daniels’ award to lose, and Drake Maye is playing better than Nix. If Daniels and the Commanders tumble while the Broncos snag a playoff spot, there’s absolutely an avenue for Nix to claim the award, but I would still take Daniels over the field.
Sando: It’s Daniels’ award to lose, but there is some uncertainty about how strongly he and that offense will finish. Nix is definitely gaining on him from a production standpoint. We can see that in the table below, which shows production for Daniels, Nix and Maye over their past six games. That’s a big change from early in the season.
Rookie QB comp: Last six games
| QB | Daniels | Nix | Maye |
|---|---|---|---|
|
W-L |
3-3 |
3-3 |
2-4 |
|
Cmp-Att |
101-163 |
132-192 |
122-181 |
|
Cmp% |
62.0% |
68.8% |
67.4% |
|
Yards |
1,203 |
1,409 |
1,214 |
|
Yds/Att |
7.4 |
7.3 |
6.7 |
|
TD-INT |
6-1 |
11-2 |
9-6 |
|
Rating |
94.2 |
104.7 |
89.0 |
|
Sacked |
11 |
11 |
15 |
|
QB EPA |
13.0 |
31.2 |
10.4 |
|
EPA/Pass Play |
+0.11 |
+0.13 |
+0.05 |
Keefer: Mike is right — it’s not only Bo Nix entering the conversation but Drake Maye as well, although he won’t be able to boast the relative team success Daniels is enjoying in Washington and Nix is enjoying in Denver. Voters for these types of awards often lean on turnaround stories, and for a while this season, Daniels was scripting the best one in football. He’s still in front, but how he responds to consecutive losses might very well end up deciding this award.
The Chiefs are 11-point favorites on the road against the Panthers and, presumably, they’ll bounce back Sunday. Does the loss in Buffalo combined with the Lions’ continued rise change how you feel about Kansas City?
Howe: A bit, yes. If the Chiefs managed to beat the Buffalo Bills with a subpar performance, that might have been a wrap, but the Lions and Bills are decisively better right now. And though everyone is waiting for the Chiefs to get significantly better as Patrick Mahomes gains experience with his skill players, we shouldn’t overlook the fact Josh Allen and the Bills will do the same. No one who has watched the playoffs for the past half-decade is ever going to write off the Chiefs, but they’re objectively behind Detroit and Buffalo entering the most pivotal stretch of the season.
Sando: The way the Bills offense handled the Chiefs defense should be concerning for Kansas City. Kansas City can improve as the season progresses because it is well coached and it will be developing key players as Isaiah Pacheco returns, Xavier Worthy gains experience, etc. But it feels like a good year to be Detroit or Buffalo, all things considered. The Chiefs are very good but less dominant than their record indicates.
Keefer: I learned my lesson last year. The regular season simply does not matter for the Chiefs. They’ve come to transcend football norms during their dynastic run. It doesn’t matter that plenty of their wins this season have been unconvincing. Doesn’t matter that Travis Kelce has taken a step back. Doesn’t matter that Patrick Mahomes has looked mediocre — or worse — for stretches. Doesn’t matter that they couldn’t close out the Bills last week. They absolutely remain a legitimate Super Bowl contender and can beat anyone in the playoffs. Remember, as Kansas City proved last year, it’s not the team that looks the best in November and December, it’s the one that gets hot in January. More than any team out there, it knows how to do that.
The Harbaugh Bowl takes place Monday night. The Baltimore Ravens trail in the AFC North title race. The 7-3 Los Angeles Chargers escaped the Cincinnati Bengals last week. There are plenty of storylines in this one. Which one intrigues you the most?
Howe: Before the season, coaches and executives around the league predicted Justin Herbert would make a jump with Jim Harbaugh, who would prioritize the ground game and a high-level defense to complement his quarterback. Harbaugh proceeded to run a conservative offense, but he’s given Herbert more of a chance to let it rip as of late. If Herbert topples the Ravens, he’s going to earn serious MVP consideration.
Sando: I’m interested in seeing whether the Chargers’ much-improved defense can slow Lamar Jackson with the benefit of whatever inside info they have from coordinators Jesse Minter and Greg Roman, who spent significant time on the Ravens’ staff. Is this a game the Chargers can play on their terms? What happens if this game picks up where Chargers-Bengals left off? Will Justin Herbert keep pace with Jackson in that case?
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Keefer: The Chargers-Bengals game was one of the best of the season — Herbert went wild in the first half, then Joe Burrow put together some of the best football I’ve ever seen him play in the second. The intriguing layer of the Harbaugh matchup Monday night is how Lamar Jackson bounces back from last week’s loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers (his -0.21 EPA per dropback and 66.1 passer rating were season lows). Jackson typically torches teams outside the AFC North, and a statement win Monday against an elite defense — the Chargers lead the league in scoring defense at 14.2 allowed per game — would push him right back in front of the MVP race.
It’s time for the biweekly NFC West temperature check. The Los Angeles Rams (5-5) host a hot Philadelphia Eagles team Sunday night. The San Francisco 49ers (5-5) are on the road against the Green Bay Packers. The Cardinals (6-4) and Seattle Seahawks (5-5) meet. Which team is in the best position to win the division?
Howe: I liked the Cardinals as a fun surprise team this season, but I didn’t anticipate they’d be a serious division threat, even if injuries among their opponents are a big reason. I’ll stick with the Cardinals because they’re playing the best and continue to get better. I do like the Seahawks and think they’re neck and neck with Arizona, so their two meetings in the next three weeks could very well tell the story in this division race. Seattle needs to focus more on the run game, though, and the O-line injuries have been problematic. The Niners still have the highest ceiling in the division, but they’ve been giving away too many games and I’m not ready to assume that pattern is about to magically break. The Rams have been too inconsistent, although I can’t rule out Matthew Stafford’s flipping a switch and keeping them in the mix.
Kyler Murray and the Arizona Cardinals could be one of the league’s surprise teams at 6-4 and atop the NFC West. (Stacy Revere / Getty Images)
Sando: The Athletic’s model gives the Cardinals a 58 percent chance of winning the division, followed by the Rams (23 percent), the 49ers (12 percent) and the Seahawks (8 percent). Is it really that lopsided? I see this division coming down to the final week, when San Francisco visits Arizona and the Rams visit Seattle. All four teams could have a shot at 9-8. Any team getting to 10-7 probably will win the division. I don’t see any team with a big advantage, but I question whether the 49ers can stay healthy enough to prevail.
Keefer: The Cardinals are playing the best of any team in the division, and as Jeff noted, these two meetings with the Seahawks could end up deciding the NFC West title. (San Francisco and L.A. have been too inconsistent.) But critical this time of year are the teams that are showing tangible signs of improvement, and the Cardinals fit the bill: Arizona has won four straight, including its last two by a combined 45 points. In three of those wins the defense allowed less than 16 points. On offense, Kyler Murray has been lighting it up. By mid-January, I like the Cardinals to win their first division title since 2015.
(Top photo of Bo Nix: Dustin Bradford / Getty Images)
Culture
NWSL infrastructure is the ‘hardest problem to solve’. Here’s how things stand around the league
All eyes will be on Kansas City, Missouri this weekend when the Orlando Pride and the Washington Spirit face off in the NWSL championship on Sunday. In a way, it will bring the season full circle with CPKC Stadium hosting an action-packed finale.
The stadium’s opening in March marked a historic moment for the NWSL, raising the standard for a club’s stadium experience. With its 11,500-seat capacity, the Current became the first NWSL club to sell out every home game in the regular season.
Although privately financing a stadium might be an unrealistic goal for some clubs, or even an unnecessary one, what the Current has accomplished with CPKC Stadium makes room for a larger conversation about infrastructure in the NWSL. Last year, league commissioner Jessica Berman described that as “probably the hardest problem to solve long-term, and one of the most important problems for us to solve as soon as possible”.
That being the case, The Athletic has taken stock of some of the biggest infrastructure-related wins and losses of the 2024 season.
Most teams are using shared facilities
Nine NWSL clubs in the 2024 season shared a venue with an MLS club. That will increase to 10 teams next year as a new MLS team comes to San Diego. Four teams share training facilities, too. Some teams also share space with a lower-division men’s team, from MLS Next Pro or USL for example.
The only team not to share its venue was the Kansas City Current, which largely used private financing to build its own stadium and training facilities.
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While sharing resources has its upsides, there can also be friction between teams. Take the disagreement between DC United and the Spirit over their long-term deal in 2021, forcing the Spirit to train at a local high school while the matter was resolved.
Three years later, the Spirit is now in a very different place, heading to another NWSL championship after winning its first title in 2021. It now has American businesswoman Michele Kang as majority owner, and Audi Field is its full-time home venue after splitting time between multiple stadiums in previous seasons. This year the Spirit sold out three matches, with its semi-final win against NJ/NY Gotham drawing 19,365 fans.
Rodman celebrates during the 2024 NWSL Playoffs semi-final match at a sold-out Audi Field (Amber Searls / Imagn Images)
Kang has not been shy about expressing her goal of Spirit one day having its own facility. This seems especially pressing now, given that USL Super League’s DC Power, partly owned by DC United, also calls Audi Field home.
In other instances, as for Racing Louisville and USL club Louisville City, having a shared facility means also sharing ownership, which makes it easier to make last-minute decisions, like when deciding to offer your venue as an alternate with only a few days’ notice.
Issues of being a tenant, and not an owner
Earlier this month, San Diego Wave FC was forced to move its final home match of the regular season across the U.S. to the aforementioned Louisville at Lynn Family Stadium because of poor playing conditions at its home, Snapdragon Stadium.
“The safety and wellbeing of all players is our top priority, and the current field conditions at Snapdragon Stadium, which are the responsibility of a third party, have not met the standards required for a safe playing environment,” the club said in a statement.
The Wave had a series of planned celebrations, including a fan appreciation night, a ceremony for Emily Van Egmond’s 100th NWSL appearance and a ceremony for Alex Morgan’s retirement. All of which had to be moved following the venue switch. Morgan’s celebration will happen next year. The venue also will host two games in the SheBelieves Cup in February.
Megan Rapinoe sustained an ACL injury during the first half of the 2023 NWSL Championship match at Snapdragon Stadium (Orlando Ramirez / Imagn Images)
Field issues in San Diego are not new, with multiple season-ending injuries for NWSL players happening at Snapdragon last year, including Megan Rapinoe’s injury in the early moments of the 2023 NWSL championship. These issues extended into the 2024 season, with former interim coach Landon Donovan saying that “outside of replacing the whole field” there was little to be done to remedy the issue.
Because the Wave is only a tenant, it has limited say over what San Diego State University does and soon cedes next priority to MLS expansion team San Diego FC.
The MLS team will have priority in scheduling, despite the Wave having a loyal fanbase and averaging 19,575 fans per game. Only one other women’s team in the world averages higher attendance, according to the club: Arsenal Women in the Women’s Super League. The university’s contract with the MLS club, though, specifies there will be an annual meeting at the start of each contract year to discuss topics such as “stadium maintenance and capital improvement plans” and “field of play quality”.
The crowding at Snapdragon has led at least one team, the professional rugby team San Diego Legion, to relocate in the new year. The team announced Tuesday it would move to the 6,000-seat Torero Stadium to make way for more weekend home matches.
Public land and public funds – or private financing?
A similar availability snafu happened in Chicago, when the punk rock festival Riot Fest announced it would be held at SeatGeek Stadium in Bridgeview, Illinois, on the same day as a home game for the Chicago Red Stars. The stadium is publicly owned by the Village of Bridgeview, and the hope was that both events would happen concurrently.
“It is unfair and unfortunate to have our club put in this situation, shining a light on the vast discrepancies in the treatment of women’s professional sports versus men’s professional sports,” Red Stars president Karen Leetzow said at the time.
The problem resolved when Riot Fest announced the festival would be relocating to Chicago proper, bringing an anticlimactic end to the months-long drama. The timing of this dilemma unraveled just after the Red Stars had packed Wrigley Field in a historic game against Bay FC on June 8.
Chicago hosted Bay FC at Wrigley Field in front of a record-breaking crowd. (Daniel Bartel / Imagn Images)
While the Red Stars have been tenants of SeatGeek Stadium since 2016, and are contracted through the 2025 season, club leadership has been outspoken about wanting to find a home closer to Chicago.
“Every week, we’re meeting with influential people here in the city who can help us get this done,” Leetzow said in August. “I have a whole series of talking points I’ve been refining and honing throughout the summer and into the fall as the (state) legislators go back into session.”
The hope is for city officials to commit public funding to a women’s soccer stadium like they did to renovate Soldier Field, where MLS side Chicago Fire FC currently competes. That might be a tall ask, though, as the Chicago Bears and White Sox are also bidding for public funding for stadium projects.
The Chicago Fire said last month they are considering building a privately financed, soccer-specific stadium in the city, and had already toured three sites for the project. The MLS team left SeatGeek Stadium, which is 30 minutes outside the city, by paying $60.5 million to get the Fire out of its lease with the venue early in 2019 after Joe Mansueto acquired a controlling stake in the team.
What about training facilities?
Investing in better infrastructure also means investing in training facilities that will help develop and prepare players.
Last year, the Utah Royals unveiled multi-million-dollar expansion and remodelling plans for an NWSL-specific training site at their Zions Bank Real Academy, a 42-acre campus with several grass and indoor fields that houses the franchise’s clubs, including Real Salt Lake in MLS. The Pride and Houston Dash have similar, dedicated spaces with their MLS counterparts.
NWSL expansion club Bay FC announced in September plans to build a training facility in San Francisco’s Treasure Island neighborhood, slated to open in 2027.
“Having a permanent dedicated space that is built specifically for our players and football operations staff will allow us to continue to attract the best national and international talent and continue our Club’s mission of being a catalyst for innovation and change for our athletes and the community,” Bay FC chief executive Brady Stewart said at the time.
The news drew criticism, though, for the decision to develop an area with a history of hazardous waste.
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More recently, Angel City Football Club unveiled plans to relocate to a nine-acre site on the campus of California Lutheran University, where they plan to upgrade and remodel a 50,000-square-foot training center. The center was previously home of the Los Angeles Rams and will undergo a multimillion-dollar remodel entirely financed by the club, serving as the team’s home for up to four years.
“The size of this performance center is incredibly important, because not only can we provide the resources and staffing and tools that they need today, but we have enough room to grow and evolve,” Julie Uhrman, president and co-founder of Angel City told The Athletic. “So, if we extend beyond from a first team to a second team to Academy, we have the ability to grow.”
The new facility will be exclusively for Angel City and feature custom lockers for players, coaches and staff. Other custom features include a dedicated locker room for players under 18, a children’s playroom to support players and staff, an onsite studio for content creation, a custom boot wall and a private outdoor relaxation lounge.
“Our commitment is that we are going to build a permanent Performance Center for our players, and we’ve actively been working on that since 2020,” Uhrman said. “Wanting something that’s 10-plus acres is challenging and takes time, and while we’re doing that, we wanted to build the best temporary training facility that we could.”
That search for a permanent home remains a “work in progress”, she added. So far, the club has “identified a couple of locations that we’re really excited about.”
Where do things stand for expansion clubs?
The NWSL is growing, with plans to announce a 16th team before the end of the year. The latest expansion club is expected to begin playing in 2026 alongside Boston. While the league isn’t hinting at which direction it will go, it’s safe to assume that having a concrete plan for a team’s facilities and infrastructure could be a deciding factor.
The ownership group in Boston proposed renovating George R. White Stadium in Franklin Park for the team’s home venue, where BOS Nation FC will play. This would be secured through equity and involve a public-private partnership with Boston Public Schools, which would retain ownership of the stadium for its own use.
As for a potential 16th expansion team, one ownership group in Cleveland recently announced the joint purchase of 13.6 acres of state land to build a $150 million, 12,500-seat stadium on what is currently undeveloped land in the city’s downtown. Cleveland Soccer Group (CSG) plans to pursue a public-private partnership, similar to Boston’s thinking.
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“I think it’s really important because most stadiums in this country have had some public financing element to them,” Murphy said. “If you look back in the state of Ohio even, maybe over the past 30 years, there’s been about $2 billion spent in this state across Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton, Toledo, (and) other cities on men’s professional (sports), and over the same periods it’s been $0 for women.”
Big step forward for soccer in The Land! ⚽️
The Cleveland Metroparks just approved a 13.6-acre land deal for a proposed stadium, part of Cleveland Soccer Group’s efforts to secure an NWSL expansion team.
Team bid results expected later this year! pic.twitter.com/h5ukBVHtQI
— I’m From Cleveland (@ImFromCle) September 19, 2024
Cleveland Metroparks purchased the roughly $4.2 million state-owned property, where the stadium will sit, from the Ohio Department of Transportation. CSG will fund the purchase, with the stadium remaining publicly owned. The purchase of this property, though, is contingent on CSG being awarded the NWSL expansion bid.
Some other potential expansion groups, such as a campaign that launched in Nashville last month, have not shared specific details on their own facilities plans. The local MLS club, Nashville SC, has however expressed interest in potentially sharing their stadium, Geodis Park.
(Top photo: Jamie Squire / Getty Images)
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