Eredivisie regular names similarities between Arne Slot and Francesco Farioli | OneFootball

Owen Wijndal is happy to have Francesco Farioli as his coach at Ajax. The 25-year-old left-back spoke in an extensive interview on VI PRO about his season full of extremes, the role the Italian has played, and just how similar his new boss is to Arne Slot.

Wijndal had the most successful period of his career under Slot at AZ, finishing second in the Eredivisie and reaching the quarter-finals of the KNVB Cup. While his stint in Amsterdam has been an admittedly much harder time, Farioli’s tenure has seen him receive more minutes in recent months.

The man with 11 Oranje caps spoke of similarities between the two trainers:

“Definitely in the tactical part, but also how obsessed they are. They predict a lot of things, what will happen in matches. It didn’t matter who we played against with AZ, you just had the feeling: We’ll get this one. Because you’re so well prepared. I have that with this trainer too.”

“It really doesn’t matter who it’s against, we all think: We know what we have to do, here are the chances, here we have to pay attention, we’re going to win this. Another similarity is the role of the full-backs. How Arne Slot wanted to play with the full-backs, this coach has that very much too. So playing on the inside, but also with the overlap, that kind of thing.”

For Wijndal, it is no surprise at all that Slot has been so successful in the Premier League with Liverpool.

“He’s doing well, isn’t he?! I expected it, you know. What I’m saying is, he’s so well prepared. Of course, the Premier League is very different from the Eredivisie. But this is nice.

“I follow him and I’m proud of him. He really gave me the chance to be a regular at AZ. That worked out really well, so I’m always grateful to him for that. When I see him again, it’ll be a laugh right away because we’ve kept a really good bond.”

GBeNeFN | Max Bradfield