Feyeno­ord coach Arne Slot con­firmed one of soc­cer’s worst-kept se­crets: He is the next Liv­er­pool man­ag­er.

Slot has pre­vi­ous­ly gone pub­lic about his ne­go­ti­a­tions with Liv­er­pool, al­though the Eng­lish club hasn’t of­fi­cial­ly com­ment­ed on his im­pend­ing ar­rival as the re­place­ment for Ju­r­gen Klopp. Liv­er­pool still hasn’t.

Slot has, though.

“I can con­firm that I will be the coach at Liv­er­pool next sea­son,” said Slot, speak­ing at a news con­fer­ence on Fri­day ahead of Feyeno­ord’s fi­nal game of the Dutch sea­son on Sun­day against Ex­cel­sior.

Ac­cord­ing to Feyeno­ord, Slot said an of­fi­cial an­nounce­ment from both clubs will fol­low “in the short term.”

Liv­er­pool had al­ready re­port­ed­ly agreed to pay Feyeno­ord about 11 mil­lion eu­ros ($11.7 mil­lion) in com­pen­sa­tion for the 45-year-old Slot. He has coached Feyeno­ord since 2021, win­ning the league last year and the Dutch Cup this sea­son.

Slot said his im­me­di­ate fo­cus was fin­ish­ing his time at Feyeno­ord with a vic­to­ry this week.

“If we win, we will have 84 points and we will be the sec­ond best team in Feyeno­ord’s club his­to­ry,” he said in quotes car­ried on the Feyeno­ord web­site. “This group has shown through­out the year that they hate los­ing. That’s what I ex­pect on Sun­day.”

On the same day, Klopp bids farewell to Liv­er­pool af­ter nine years in charge in a home match against Wolver­hamp­ton.

Klopp said last month that Slot would be tak­ing over the “best job in the world” if he is ap­point­ed by Liv­er­pool.

BY  STEVE DOU­GLAS