Editor’s Column: How does Arne Slot channel Uruguay’s Darwin Nunez?

It’s humorous… If Darwin Nunez was by no means signed by Jurgen Klopp and followers this summer time had been watching this deadly, bodily behemoth of a striker rating each recreation for Uruguay, they’d be clamouring for Michael Edwards and Richard Hughes to deliver him to Liverpool.

Nunez is on fireplace for his nation. He’s scored in seven consecutive video games for Uruguay, the perfect report since Hector Sacrone in 1928.

These objectives have are available large matches towards large opponents, too. He’s fired previous Colombia, Brazil, Argentina. He scored a hat-trick towards Mexico and is 2 from two thus far within the Copa America towards Panama and Bolivia.

The issue for a lot of Liverpool followers is that they didn’t see a striker able to something shut on the finish of the season. The Uruguay Nunez is an enigma, and have become much more of 1 as final time period fizzled out.

On the finish of 2023/24, he went ten matches with no purpose. You’ll be able to’t do this as a Liverpool attacker. And it wasn’t like he didn’t get the possibilities to take action. His confidence was beneath zero and his ending was decrease.

From the excessive of the successful purpose towards Nottingham Forest in March, which was midway via a run of 11 objectives and 5 assists in 15 video games, Nunez fell off a cliff.

Why?

Effectively, in equity, his team-mates collectively collapsed as effectively. The legs ran out. The choices being made turned extra frantic and the strain to log out Klopp’s tenure with a Premier League title was clearly an excessive amount of. By the point Liverpool misplaced 2-0 to Everton at Goodison Park, it was over.

Many Liverpool followers recommend the set off for the downfall was Nunez’s foolish mistake towards Manchester United within the FA Cup, the place he gave the ball away needlessly at 3-2 up in Additional Time. They went and scored after which grabbed a winner. It was a foul error, but it surely wasn’t the one one. Mo Salah, for instance, had a worse finish of season run than he did – however with much less destructive defining moments.

It did appear that the connection between Nunez and Klopp soured a bit of. The striker deleted any connection to Liverpool from his social media accounts after on-line abuse circled and Klopp introduced Cody Gakpo again into the crew at his expense.

Klopp leaving is after all not a net-positive, but it surely may be good for Nunez.

In spite of everything, he thrives beneath Marcelo Bielsa at worldwide stage. Who is aware of what makes Nunez tick? He’s a sophisticated, emotional, delicate footballer. He’s frenetic, sometimes silly, infantile and incompetent – with the penchant for real brilliance – due to a daft ability set filled with bodily, motion and ball-striking attributes.

Bear in mind, when Slot arrived, Liverpool loudly leaked to the on-beat journalists that Nunez was very a lot a part of his plans. There can be no discuss of a sale. Slot would fortunately have a crack at getting the perfect out of him.

Bielsa performs a 4-2-3-1 formation with Uruguay, with Nunez up high, however allowed to run the left-channel. That is most likely his finest place. Not solely up high or on the left-wing, however a mix of each, like Thierry Henry for Arsenal. Slot additionally performed 4-2-3-1 with Feyenoord.

Watching his Uruguay objectives as a Liverpool fan is genuinely irritating. Proper-foot, left-foot, headed objectives, with energy and precision.

Loads of them although present him doing precisely what he does for Liverpool; hitting it laborious and on course. They undergo the keepers’ legs or simply previous him and everybody says, ‘nice end’. However he isn’t actually aiming right here. Final season, a loopy quantity of efforts Nunez had had been good, sturdy contacts on targets that merely hit the keeper. Might he be extra refined? Sure. However was he unfortunate? Completely. And don’t get me began on the variety of occasions he hit the woodwork…

His concern is that each little bit of unhealthy luck noticed his confidence drop, and the extra this occurred, the much less possible it turned that his subsequent shot would hit the online.

With Uruguay, the alternative is occurring. An excellent summer time with Uruguay will hopefully see Nunez hit the bottom operating in pre-season with Slot.

If he turns up bristling with power and pleasure to work beneath a brand new boss, it’d simply click on.