Liverpool favourite insists Arne Slot is on 'same level' as Jurgen Klopp

Former Liverpool midfielder Georginio Wijnaldum has insisted new Reds boss Arne Slot is on the "same level" as his predecessor Jurgen Klopp.

Klopp stepped down from his post at Anfield this summer and was replaced by former Feyenoord boss Slot, who hosted Wijnaldum for a number of training sessions as the Dutch midfielder geared up for his move to Saudi Arabian side Al Ettifaq.

While their time together may have been short, Wijnaldum told Algemeen Dagblad that he saw enough to get him excited about Slot's future at Liverpool.

"At the beginning of this season I trained for a few days at Feyenoord and there I saw how Slot worked," Wijnaldum explained. "That was of a very high level, I thought it was really great.

"I can compare it with Klopp and [Jose] Mourinho and then I say that Slot is at the same level. Yes, he now comes into a completely different world, that's just fact. But that doesn't mean he can't do there what he did at Feyenoord.

"In Arne Slot, I think Liverpool has really acquired a great successor. It doesn't matter at all that they don't all know Slot inside and out in England yet. When I moved from PSV to Newcastle United, I had become the Dutch champion, played in the Dutch national team, and we played European football, but I didn't have the feeling that they knew much about that there.

"The Premier League is so big and so good, they don't really look at other countries. It's somewhat comparable to what I'm experiencing now with the move to play outside of Europe. People just aren't that interested."

Wijnaldum spent five years under Klopp between 2016 and 2021, with the club's inability to tie the Dutchman down to a new contract before his exit understood to have been a real source of frustration for Klopp at the time.

The pair were close during their time together. Klopp admitted he missed Wijnaldum just 12 months after his departure from Anfield, while Wijnaldum paid tribute to the boss with two love hearts on social media this summer.

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