Arne Slot and FSG used European club as a ‘blueprint’ for Liverpool’s summer transfer activity | OneFootball

Arne Slot was so impressed by one team that Liverpool faced last season that he and FSG used them as a ‘blueprint’ for the club’s statement-making summer transfer window.

When excluding defeats of no consequence (i.e. after the Premier League title or Champions League progression was secured, and the first leg of the Carabao Cup semi-final), the Reds only lost five times in the whole of 2024/25.

One of those was to Paris Saint-Germain at Anfield, who eliminated us from Europe in the round of 16 (on penalties) and then went on to win the competition outright, leaving the Merseysiders with a sense of what might’ve been had they rather than Luis Enrique’s side prevailed in March.

Liverpool used PSG as a ‘blueprint’ for summer recruitment

In an article for The Telegraph on Tuesday, Chris Bascombe wrote of how Slot and FSG sought to emulate many of PSG’s qualities with the players that Liverpool signed over the summer.

The reporter outlined: ‘When the coach and the recruiters set out their plans for an expensive summer revamp, the blueprint was obvious.

‘Slot has a contrasting style to Enrique, but in adding the pace of Alexander Isak, Hugo Ekitike and Jeremie Frimpong especially, he wanted more of what PSG possess. In Florian Wirtz, Liverpool also added the No. 7 who they hope will bring their seventh European Cup.’

(Photo by Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)

Can Liverpool go on to topple PSG as champions of Europe?

A few teams managed to beat Liverpool last season, but PSG were the only one to discernibly outclass the Reds, in particular during the first leg of that Champions League tie in March (which we somehow managed to win before the tide was turned at Anfield a week later).

It was impossible not to be enthralled by the manner in which Enrique’s side powered on to win the trophy for the first time, administering a 5-0 thrashing to Inter Milan in the most one-sided final in the tournament’s 70-year history.

It’s therefore no wonder that Slot and FSG looked to the Ligue 1 giants as the ‘blueprint’ to try and copy when it came to devising LFC’s summer transfer strategy – not in terms of the money-spinning investment of the Parisians’ Qatari ownership, but rather the type of players in their squad.

Ironically, it was only after a shift towards a more modest marketplace approach that PSG finally climbed to the top of the Champions League tree, whereas Liverpool have spent massively to try and topple the French side as kings of Europe in 2026.

However, if newcomers like Wirtz, Isak, Ekitike and Frimpong can help the Reds to evolve into a team with the speed, potency and technical brilliance of the Ligue 1 champions, they could well fulfil Opta’s objective prediction as the team most likely to lift the trophy in Budapest next May.