Sepp van den Berg knew what he had to do. The Brentford centre-half knew what he was going to do. Another summer, another change; another push to find a footballing home. It was June 2024 and as he enjoyed a lunch in the sunshine with his brother and friends in their hometown of Zwolle in the Netherlands, he could reflect on an excellent season on loan from Liverpool at Mainz. “Then I got a tap on my shoulder,” Van den Berg says.

It was Arne Slot. Another guy who had grown up in the area. Slot’s first job as a manager had been with the PEC Zwolle under-13s after he retired as a player at the club in 2013; Van den Berg, playing a year up, was in his squad. Now Slot had been confirmed as Jürgen Klopp’s successor at Liverpool and he was looking forward to the start of pre-season.

“I was a bit surprised,” Van den Berg says. “And maybe it was a little bit awkward. It was just funny … coming from the same hometown, he’d coached me when I was a kid and now he’s the guy at Liverpool. He was just like: ‘How’s...