Arne Slot has made a public complaint about the growing reliance on set pieces in the Premier League, saying the trend has diminished his enjoyment of many fixtures. The Liverpool manager argued the current emphasis on dead-ball situations is a marked contrast with other competitions and with an era of football he admires.<\/p>\n
“If I watch other leagues, I do not see as much emphasis on set pieces,” Slot said. “In the Eredivisie, I see goals being disallowed and fouls on goalkeepers being given and I think: ‘Wow, what a big difference.'”<\/p>\n
He went on to underline his frustration with match refereeing and his own aesthetic standards. “Here, you can almost hit a goalkeeper in the face and the referee still says, ‘Play on.’ Do I like that? My heart as a former player does not like it. If you ask me, thinking about football, I think about the Barcelona team from 10, 15 years ago. Every Sunday you looked forward to watching them play.”<\/p>\n
“Most of the games I watch in the Premier League are not a pleasure for me, but they are interesting because they are very competitive.” Slot’s lines found support among some neutrals but drew rebuttal from those who see set-piece mastery as a legitimate route to victory.<\/p>\n
Mikel Arteta furnished that counterpoint after Arsenal\u2019s recent win over Chelsea, pointing to the quality and tactical demands of such matches. “It\u2019s not ugly, you have to play the game that is there for you to play, and against Chelsea, you know exactly the game you\u2019re going to play,” Arteta argued this weekend. “For me, it\u2019s a beautiful game to play because there is so much quality and you have to adapt so much to what they do, and they have to do the same against us, so the margins are very, very small, and the duels at the end decide these kind of games.”<\/p>\n
The London derby produced three corner goals and Opta noted there were only two corner goals across the 16 Premier League games between J\u00fcrgen Klopp\u2019s Liverpool and Pep Guardiola\u2019s Manchester City. Excluding penalties and own goals, more than 29% of Premier League goals in 2025\u201326 have come from dead balls, the highest seasonal ratio since 2010\u201311 (29.3%), the year Manchester United won a third successive top-flight title.<\/p>\n
Voices across the game have long debated aesthetics and results. Eduardo Galeano wrote: “Years have gone by and I\u2019ve finally learned to accept myself for who I am: a beggar for good soccer,” and “I go about the world, hand outstretched, and in the stadiums I plead: ‘A pretty move, for the love of God.'” Jorge Valdano asked tougher questions of taste: “Football is made up of subjective feeling, of suggestion,” and “Put a s— hanging from a stick in the middle of this passionate, crazy stadium and there are people who will tell you it\u2019s a work of art. It\u2019s not: it\u2019s a s— hanging from a stick.” France World Cup winner Bixente Lizarazu once called the tiki-taka era “love without sex.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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