Arne Slot stepped into Parc des Princes on Tuesday with the memory of Manchester still raw and Paris still painful. He did not try to hide either.
Liverpool arrive in France off the back of a 4-0 dismantling by Manchester City, returning to the scene of last season’s smash-and-grab 1-0 win over Paris Saint-Germain – a night when Alisson Becker performed miracles and the scoreline bordered on fiction. This time, Slot knows there will be no disguising who they are over 90 minutes.
“The first 35 minutes,” he said, when asked what gives him confidence of a reaction. That was his anchor. Not the scoreline at the Etihad, not the final image of a broken team, but a spell where Liverpool went toe-to-toe with what he called one of the two best open-play sides in Europe – the other being PSG.
For 35 minutes at City, Liverpool pressed, combined and passed with conviction. Then came the collapse. Two goals before the break, a third straight after it, and a fourth in a 20‑minute blackout that Slot openly admits would be fatal in Paris.
“If we have those 20 minutes tomorrow evening here, we will again concede four goals,” he warned. “These players over here know how to act if we have 20 minutes of that.”
A captain’s anger, a manager’s challenge
Virgil van Dijk did not sugar-coat anything after the Etihad. Slot welcomed that. He wanted the anger, the sting, the public demand for more.
“I think it is also good from the captain that he has a strong and firm reaction after a game like that,” Slot said. The hope now is that the fury lives longer than a post-match interview and shows itself in Paris, from the first whistle to the last.
Slot and his staff have spent the days since City in meetings and one-to-ones, replaying those 20 minutes that wrecked the tie. The errors are obvious to him, obvious to the players, obvious to anyone who watched. But the opponent now is different.
City allowed Liverpool spells of controlled possession. PSG under Luis Enrique do not. They hunt. They suffocate. “They don’t give you any second of time to have the ball comfortably at your feet. It is press, press, press, press, press every second of the game,” Slot said.
The message to his players is brutal in its simplicity: match the intensity of your best spell at the Etihad for the full game, or prepare for another long, punishing night.
Living with setbacks – and using them
If there is one thing this Liverpool side have not lacked this season, it is adversity. Slot almost laughed as he started to list the late blows: Leeds away, Fulham at home, the quarter-final against City, and many more he didn’t have time to mention.
“The good thing is that during this year we have become quite experienced in terms of negativity because of all the setbacks we've had,” he said. The City defeat hurt because of the stage and the opponent, but he insisted it felt just as bad as throwing away leads in stoppage time in the league.
The challenge is to turn that catalogue of pain into something useful. Slot leans heavily on the club’s history for that.
“This club has always shown that in tough moments, they stand up again,” he said. “We’ve had a lot of tough moments and we've stood up a few times but then fallen down again. Now, we have to show that mentality again – just keep going up and picking ourselves up after a disappointment.”
He points to the Galatasaray tie as a recent example. Poor away, outstanding at Anfield. Erratic, yes. But proof that this group can flip a narrative inside a week.
PSG continuity vs Liverpool change
Slot is under no illusions about the scale of the task. PSG are not just European champions; they are a side that stayed together after lifting the trophy and, in his eyes, have grown even more cohesive.
“As it proves out in football, usually the longer teams play together, the better they become,” he said. “They were so impressive last season… they are just as impressive, maybe even more impressive, this season. There’s even more rotations and they are still a very good team.”
Liverpool, by contrast, look different from the side that came here last season. Personnel, patterns, rhythm – much has shifted. The memory of that night remains vivid, though. Slot was blunt about how it really played out.
“We deserved to lose here last season 4-0 completely, much more than we deserved to lose on Saturday 4-0,” he admitted. “It was only thanks to Alisson that we didn't lose 4-0 and then we got away with a 1-0 win.”
At Anfield, he felt Liverpool deserved their victory. Over the two legs, the margins came down to penalties, where Gianluigi Donnarumma’s performance tilted the entire competition. Slot still bristles slightly at the role of luck in shootouts, but he knows those details decide trophies.
No time for favourites, only for proof
Asked whether it matters who goes into this tie as favourite, Slot brushed it aside. Two games. High-end talent on both sides. Too many variables.
“I don't think it matters that much if there was a favourite yes or no because it's only about two games and a lot can happen,” he said. What he does care about is identity. He wants Liverpool to prove they are the team from the first 35 minutes at the Etihad, not the 20 minutes that followed.
City and PSG, in his mind, are comparable: elite quality, clear structure, suffocating style. So he frames this quarter-final as a second chance – not at a specific opponent, but at the level Liverpool aspire to live at.
“It's another chance for us to show that we are not the team that we were during the 20 minutes that we prefer to forget in the Etihad,” he said.
One game at a time, with Anfield in sight
Slot refuses to project this tie forward as a springboard to a Champions League win, the way PSG used their victory over Liverpool last season. “I don't think so far ahead, especially if you face Paris Saint-Germain,” he said. The schedule is relentless enough: PSG away, Fulham at Anfield, PSG again, then a trip to Everton.
He does, though, keep circling back to one potential turning point – bringing the tie home with something to cling to. Liverpool’s European mythology is built on Anfield comebacks and nights when the stadium bends the sport to its will.
“Especially if we can bring this game to Anfield, as we saw last season, as we've seen so many times,” Slot said. He reels off Real Madrid at home, Galatasaray at home, big European performances that proved this squad can still live with the continent’s elite.
He knows the inconsistency is real. He does not argue with it. “Performances and results have been very inconsistent throughout the whole season,” he admitted. “Easier said than done,” he added of fixing it, “but this group has shown many times to come back after setbacks and this club has even done it many, many, many, many more times.”
Now comes Paris. A stadium where Liverpool “completely deserved to lose 4-0” last season, yet walked away with a 1-0 win. A champion team that presses in waves. A manager demanding 90 minutes at the level his side managed for 35 in Manchester.
Liverpool do not need history lessons in this arena. They need a performance that belongs alongside them.
