{"id":164359,"date":"2025-09-23T21:09:04","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T21:09:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/164359\/"},"modified":"2025-09-23T21:09:04","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T21:09:04","slug":"arne-slot-has-already-told-alexander-isak-what-to-learn-from-ousmane-dembele-liverpool-fc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/164359\/","title":{"rendered":"Arne Slot has already told Alexander Isak what to learn from Ousmane Dembele – Liverpool FC"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ousmane Dembele was awarded the 2025 Ballon d\u2019Or on Monday night, with Arne Slot<\/a> having held up the Paris Saint-Germain striker as an example for Alexander Isak<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Dembele lifted the Ballon d\u2019Or trophy at the ceremony in Paris on Monday night, with Mohamed Salah<\/a> somehow failing to even place among the top three.<\/p>\n

It came after a season in which PSG won five trophies, including the Champions League<\/a>, which saw them knock the Reds out of the last 16.<\/p>\n

Slot was so taken with the performances of Luis Enrique\u2019s side that it has informed the evolution of his system at Liverpool, including a big-spending summer capped with the \u00a3125 million signing of Isak.<\/p>\n

Asked earlier this month about the steps his new No. 9 must take<\/a>, Slot used Dembele\u2019s pressing game as a prime example.<\/p>\n

\"LIVERPOOL,<\/p>\n

\u201cSpeaking about Paris Saint-Germain [last season], I don\u2019t think anyone was surprised that I was mainly impressed by the way they press,\u201d the head coach explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cOusmane Dembele was one of the examples, he was so outstanding in his pressing game.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo everybody is focused on Paris Saint-Germain, about all the goals they score, but I was mainly impressed by the way they pressed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe moment [Isak is] fit, match fit, and can play 90, the next step is playing three times in a week 90 minutes, and then the next step is going one step further in terms of pressing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what he has to do, and scoring goals, doing special things in attack, that is something he will 100 percent sure do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"LIVERPOOL,<\/p>\n

Isak is certainly not new to a high-intensity pressing game, having been among the top 14 percent of strikers in last season\u2019s Premier League<\/a> when it came to winning possession in the final third.<\/p>\n

But it is an area that Slot expects him to improve further in the months and years to come at Liverpool.<\/p>\n

Given the Swede is otherwise the full package in terms of his centre-forward play \u2013 tall, strong, quick, agile, tactically flexible and one of the best finishers in the world \u2013 it is an obvious area for him to focus on.<\/p>\n

That could in fact help push him into Ballon d\u2019Or contention himself, particularly as Dembele had never even placed in the rankings prior to winning this year.<\/p>\n

The France international was honoured ahead of Barcelona<\/a>\u2018s Lamine Yamal and PSG teammate Vitinha, while Liverpool\u2019s other nominees Alexis Mac Allister<\/a>, Virgil van Dijk<\/a> and Florian Wirtz<\/a> finished 22nd, 28th and 29th respectively.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ousmane Dembele was awarded the 2025 Ballon d\u2019Or on Monday night, with Arne Slot having held up the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[12033,22261,64,63,43243,596,107271,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-164359","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-alexander-isak","9":"tag-arne-slot","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-ballon-dor","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-ousmane-dembele","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}