{"id":621422,"date":"2025-12-09T04:26:30","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T04:26:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/621422\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T04:26:30","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T04:26:30","slug":"press-conference-transcript-arne-slot-on-mohamed-salah-facing-inter-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/621422\/","title":{"rendered":"Press conference transcript: Arne Slot on Mohamed Salah, facing Inter and more"},"content":{"rendered":"

On if he sees a scenario where Salah returns to the team…<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’m a firm believer that there’s always a possibility to return for a player. So, I can leave it with that, I think.<\/p>\n

On Salah’s reaction after their conversation today…<\/strong><\/p>\n

A short one.<\/p>\n

On what prompted him to name Salah on the bench in recent games…<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think we as a team struggled this season and already last season more and more with the game plans other teams had against us. So, I’m not only talking about the long-ball style, which is something teams mainly do against us now. I’ve tried to come up with solutions because that is my job, and we’ve tried many things. We looked very vulnerable, in my opinion, after all the things I’ve tried, against Forest and against PSV.<\/p>\n

Then I decided to play with an extra midfielder in the game against West Ham, where we won the game. So I decided to do it one more time against Sunderland, where at half-time I brought him in. And against Leeds we faced a 5-3-2, where I’ve decided to play a 4-4-2 diamond if you want to look at it like this, with Hugo Ekitike a bit off the right side and Cody Gakpo a bit off the left, with Florian Wirtz in between. I could have played Mo as well off the right instead of Hugo, but I decided to play Hugo.<\/p>\n

On if he thinks Salah has played his last game for Liverpool…<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have no clue, I cannot answer that question at this moment of time.<\/p>\n

On if ‘he feels his authority has been undermined’…<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don’t feel my authority is undermined, is that the way you say it? It’s not the way I feel it.<\/p>\n

On if the situation ‘makes his life more difficult’ during a tough period…<\/strong><\/p>\n

If that was even possible. But it’s not about me, if my life is difficult yes or no, that’s not very important in a situation like this. It is [about] if it’s more difficult for the team and for the club. And I think no-one likes us to be in the situation we are in at the moment. First of all, it’s difficult to see staff members that work so hard on a daily basis affected by the situation we are in now as well, mainly because of the results, second of all about what this has done as well. That’s not a good thing for us as a team, and that is where mostly my thoughts go to, not towards me. OK, because I’m the manager I have to pick a team so to a certain extent I’m important in this situation as well, but the focus that I have at the moment is completely on the team and not on me at all.<\/p>\n

On whether he understands the frustration and why Salah ‘would say such things’…<\/strong><\/p>\n

Then I should know what he exactly means with it, and that is difficult for me to know what he exactly means with it – and why he says this and who he’s referring to.<\/p>\n

On whether they’ve had a conversation on what ‘he meant by his words’…<\/strong><\/p>\n

No. Not what he meant with those words, no. I think usually I’m calm and polite but that doesn’t mean I’m weak, so if a player has these comments about so many things then it’s about me, us as a club to react and we reacted in a way you can see now, that he’s not here.<\/p>\n

On whether he feels he ‘could have done anything differently’ to have avoided the situation…<\/strong><\/p>\n

Then I should find out exactly why he said what he said. But then I have to guess a little bit if that’s not only because he doesn’t play, then the answer to your question could be just play him every single time – but maybe that’s not the reason why he said what he said. Maybe there is something else why he has this opinion. But that I don’t know. Is it about me not playing him? Then the answer could be what could I have done differently? Playing him. Maybe that’s not the reason why he thinks and feels this way – and he has every right to feel what he feels, but he doesn’t have the right to share it with the media… he has that right but it’s up to us to react on it.<\/p>\n

On the last time he spoke to Salah and whether they’re ‘on speaking terms’…<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, we were. But it doesn’t mean we were always agreeing on things. I spoke to him twice in the week in the two days before Leeds.<\/p>\n

On whether he’s spoken to Salah since Leeds…<\/strong><\/p>\n

No. I already said that a few times. He was on the training ground today and I told him that he didn’t travel, but that’s not speaking to someone, in my opinion. It is speaking to someone, but it is not having a conversation in a room. I had that twice in the lead-up towards Leeds, one a little bit longer and one a bit shorter, but I am not going to go into the details if that is going to be the next question.<\/p>\n

On whether he spoke towards Salah as part of the group in training…<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes. I communicated towards him that he wasn’t travelling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On if he sees a scenario where Salah returns to the team… I’m a firm believer that there’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":621423,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8815],"tags":[1050,748,393,1051,4884,1039,1046,1041,1052,1054,1053,179,763,1045,1044,1040,1049,1042,1047,1043,16,15,1048],"class_list":{"0":"post-621422","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-liverpool","8":"tag-alisson","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-firmino","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-homepage","14":"tag-klopp","15":"tag-lfc","16":"tag-lfc-news","17":"tag-lfctv","18":"tag-lfctv-go","19":"tag-liverpool","20":"tag-liverpool-fc","21":"tag-liverpool-fc-match","22":"tag-liverpool-fc-news","23":"tag-liverpool-football-club","24":"tag-mane","25":"tag-reds","26":"tag-salah","27":"tag-the-reds","28":"tag-uk","29":"tag-united-kingdom","30":"tag-van-dijk"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115687717820128493","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=621422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/621423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}