Trent Alexander-Arnold, the Liverpool legacy question and why so many fans are angry

Before every Liverpool home game, the team bus turns off Walton Lane and crawls into Anfield Road, where fans line the street, waving flags, blaring horns and filling the air with red smoke.

The streets around the stadium feature murals paying homage to Liverpool heroes past and present: from legends of the 1960s and 1970s, such as Roger Hunt, Ian St John, Ray Clemence and Phil Neal, to the modern era with Steven Gerrard, Jurgen Klopp, Jordan Henderson, Roberto Firmino, Luis Diaz, Mohamed Salah and others.

Trent Alexander-Arnold was only 20 years old when he was honoured with a mural on the end of Sybil Street. It’s a beauty, a huge picture of him next to the words he breathlessly uttered after the Champions League triumph in Madrid in 2019: “I’m just a normal lad from Liverpool whose dream has just come true.”

He has certainly lived the dream, not just breaking through at his hometown club as a teenager, but winning so many trophies — and not just clinging on at full-back, as a local-boy-done-good might reasonably aspire to do, but as a beguiling creative type who has changed the way we view full-backs.

If you asked him a few years ago whether he envisaged spending his whole career at Liverpool, he always said yes. He spoke of wanting to be captain and while he has always been a fiercely ambitious footballer, for a long time his horizons didn’t seem to stretch beyond the River Mersey. Even his first-person article on the Players’ Tribune website was entitled “Liverpool, Liverpool, Liverpool”.

But people and their outlooks can change a lot between the ages of 19 and 26, and a footballer’s outlook can certainly shift as his contract ticks down and he learns of overtures from elsewhere.

The one thing that was missing from his statement on Monday morning, confirming his decision to leave Liverpool when his contract expires at the end of June, was a mention of his next step.

But there is no mystery about that. He is not the first player to be seduced by Real Madrid and he will not be the last. As much as the Premier League might have felt like the centre of the football universe in recent years, Real Madrid are, by just about every measure, the biggest club on the planet.

Anfield is one of the great stages in world football, with its own mystique and, as demonstrated nine days ago when Alexander-Arnold and his team-mates celebrated winning the Premier League title, a raucous energy that makes it a rarity among the homes of the game’s super-clubs.

But the Bernabeu can feel like the playground of sporting gods, the stands towering above you and those brilliant white shirts gleaming in the half-light.

Alexander-Arnold’s first memories of football were formed during Madrid’s first galactico era, the team of Zinedine Zidane, Luis Figo, Roberto Carlos, David Beckham and Brazil’s Ronaldo. He played in the 2018 Champions League final against a team containing Cristiano Ronaldo, Luka Modric, Toni Kroos and Karim Benzema. Now, a new team has emerged, built around the younger talents of Vinicius Junior, Jude Bellingham and Kylian Mbappe.

There has often been — now, as in the past — a battle to blend all those talents into a coherent team. But the allure of Madrid is something very few players can resist.

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When Alexander-Arnold was asked about his ambitions in an interview with Sky Sports in October, he said he would prefer to win the Ballon d’Or than win the World Cup with England.

That might initially have sounded like the kind of club-before-country mindset that Liverpool supporters welcomed in their former defender Jamie Carragher, but listening further, Alexander-Arnold’s ambitions were far from parochial.

He said he hoped to be remembered as “a legend of football, someone who changed the game… I want that legacy of being the greatest right-back to have played football. I have to reach for the stars and that’s where I believe my ceiling can go.”

“I believe I can win a Ballon d’Or” 🏆

Trent Alexander-Arnold is aiming to be one of the best ever! 🏅 pic.twitter.com/ZRJ9g01hs5

— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) October 26, 2024

The obvious thing to point out here is that Liverpool have given him a wonderful platform to optimise his talent, first under Klopp and now under Arne Slot. He won the Champions League aged 20 and the Premier League at 21. There were more trophies along the way — and near-misses — before he became a Premier League champion again at 26. He has blossomed into one of the most influential players in English football.

But Alexander-Arnold’s choice reflects something else in the way he regards his career. In terms of his stated ambition to be “a legend… someone who changed the game”, he feels there is no better stage than the Bernabeu.

It is easy to see why. When Manchester City midfielder Rodri won the Ballon d’Or in October, he was only the third winner from an English club since George Best in 1968. And even Rodri’s victory was considered so outrageous by Real Madrid — a perceived snub to Vinicius Jr — that the club boycotted the ceremony even though they won the team of the year award and individual prizes for Mbappe and coach Carlo Ancelotti.

Alexander-Arnold has been nominated for the Ballon d’Or award on two occasions, finishing 19th in 2019 and 22nd three years later. He has been named in the FIFPro World XI once, in 2020. If he feels that a starring role for Madrid would earn him more global recognition than a starring role for Liverpool has done, he is almost certainly right.

But it is not a move without risk. While the upsides are obvious — not least the prospect of joining a club that has won six of the past 11 Champions League titles — playing for Madrid can be tough.

There are plenty of players who, having been paraded with great fanfare on arrival, have been scapegoated or frozen out, falling victim to politics in the boardroom, dressing room or both. Being signed as heir apparent to Dani Carvajal, a lifelong Madridista, might bring complications if the 33-year-old vice-captain stays to fight for his place. The current squad has at times appeared less political and divided than some of those in the recent past, but there have been more whispers about tensions, cliques and power struggles as this difficult season has gone on.

At least Alexander-Arnold will have an immediate ally in the dressing room. He has forged a tight bond with Bellingham in the England squad — so tight, in fact, that a couple of years ago, Liverpool supporters on social media responded to every picture of the pair together by suggesting that “Agent Trent” might help get the midfielder to Merseyside.

Few foresaw that, with Bellingham leaving Borussia Dortmund for Madrid instead, the roles would be flipped, with “Agent Jude” the one presumed to be doing the sales pitch.

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From the moment he burst onto the scene as a teenager, Bellingham has seemed representative of a new generation of football superstars with a steely focus that took him from Birmingham City to Dortmund at 17, and then Madrid at 19, all with a swaggering confidence that is rare even among elite-level players.

Alexander-Arnold has appeared less conspicuously of that type, widely presumed to be content as a particularly precious cog in a well-oiled machine at Liverpool.

But perhaps his single-mindedness has been underestimated. Maybe the Liverpool hierarchy were guilty of complacency when they allowed him to sign only a four-year contract in the summer of 2021 — and then again when, in a state of flux at executive level, they waited until last summer to begin serious discussions over a new deal.

By then, it was clear to Liverpool’s new hierarchy, led by incoming sporting director Richard Hughes and Fenway Sports Group CEO of football Michael Edwards, that negotiations with Alexander-Arnold were going to be difficult. His head had been turned by Madrid’s interest and, with his contract running down, it was the ideal opportunity to explore other options.

Liverpool tried to sell him a vision of what a new chapter might look like (and indeed has so far looked like) under Slot’s management. But contract negotiations never seriously progressed because Alexander-Arnold made clear he wanted a new challenge and it was not going to be about money. As one source at Anfield said, speaking on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation, “What can you do if he’s reached the stage where John Lennon didn’t want to be in The Beatles any more?”

In the video that accompanied his statement, there was footage of him as a two-year-old in a pushchair at the team’s homecoming parade after winning the UEFA Cup in May 2001. Again, the emphasis was on having fulfilled his childhood dreams. “This isn’t about wanting something better,” he said. “It’s about me and my personal journey as a player. And I feel like now is the right time for me to go out and experience (something different). I have never known anything else and this decision is about experiencing a new challenge, taking myself out of my comfort zone and pushing myself both professionally and personally.”

Many Liverpool supporters will resent Alexander-Arnold’s decision, particularly at a time when the team are performing so well under Slot and given he has run down his contract, meaning the club will not receive a transfer fee.

A contrast will inevitably be made with Gerrard. The former captain came very close to leaving for Chelsea in the summer of 2005, but ended up committing almost his entire career to Liverpool, even rejecting an offer from Madrid in the summer of 2010 when his hometown club was at a particularly low ebb. Even when he left for LA Galaxy at the age of 35, he did so with a heavy heart.

Alexander-Arnold will have weighed up the Liverpool legacy question from the moment Madrid came calling. His reputation on his native Merseyside matters to him, but he seems a little more worldly than Gerrard — just as Beckham, who left Manchester United for Madrid in 2003, seemed more worldly than Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes.

Gerrard and Carragher have often talked about the burden of responsibility they felt as local players at Liverpool. Even when playing in Los Angeles and managing Rangers, Aston Villa and the Saudi Arabian club Al Ettifaq, Gerrard continued to give the impression his world revolved around Liverpool.

Alexander-Arnold has always appeared more detached from that pressure. That reflects not just the free-spiritedness of the Klopp (and now Slot) era, but also that of a player who left Merseyside for the footballers’ enclave in the Cheshire village of Hale, south of Manchester, as a 20-year-old and who has been spotted in London, the Cotswolds and Venice on days off in recent months. Like Bellingham, he is comfortable with the thought of spreading his wings.

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That is not to say the leaving of Liverpool will be easy.

On the day Klopp departed at the end of last season, Alexander-Arnold was on the verge of tears during the manager’s farewell speech. That is not the sign of someone whose personal ambition equates to coldness.

He might have spent time contemplating his own farewell in May, riding off into the sunset with a Premier League winner’s medal in his hand and the adulation of the fans ringing in his ears. How picture-perfect that sounds.

The past few weeks have indeed been idyllic: returning from injury to score that winner at Leicester City to put Liverpool within three points of the title, then being part of the win that sealed the deal against Tottenham, with Alexander-Arnold at the heart of the celebrations, serenaded by the Kop as “the Scouser in our team”.

But that was at a time when many fans hoped he might stay. Some studied his body language and wondered whether a Gerrard-esque change of heart might be possible.

Since he made his intentions clear, we have seen a range of reactions. Some have reluctantly accepted Alexander-Arnold’s decision and wish him well. Some said they understand it but feel let down nonetheless. Some will react furiously because that is almost invariably what happens when a homegrown player decides his future lies elsewhere. The social-media footage of someone burning a Liverpool shirt bearing his name in March might have been the work of a solitary attention-seeker, but a sense of disappointment will be felt by many.

When The Athletic first reported the direction of travel in March, the mood was summed up by one Liverpool supporter, John Gibbons, who said on The Anfield Wrap podcast: “If any player — not just Trent — thinks you can effectively walk out and go to Real Madrid and that everyone is going to be patting you on your back giving you their best wishes, that’s naive.”

In a subsequent podcast, Gibbons observed that the reality was more nuanced, that Alexander-Arnold “loves Liverpool, he has really loved it here, but he just quite fancies doing something else”.

But there is no easy way to leave a club like Liverpool at the peak of your powers to pursue a new challenge. And, even if fans understand the reasoning, many will find it hard to swallow.

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Some will deride Alexander-Arnold’s wish to be acclaimed as “the greatest right-back to have played football”.

Has his immense talent ever been fully appreciated in England? Perhaps not. It certainly has been at Liverpool, where the vision and range of his passing have frequently met with gasps from the crowd. But further afield, there remains a fixation on his shortcomings.

As England manager, Gareth Southgate only picked him 29 times in six years — and for just 242 minutes of football (exactly half of them in an experimental and swiftly abandoned midfield role at Euro 2024) across three major tournaments.

There have been times when Alexander-Arnold’s defensive work has lacked rigour; he will never be a Carvajal-type full-back, as was underlined when a lapse of concentration allowed Vinicius Jr to score the only goal of the 2022 Champions League final. His performance against Manchester United in January was also widely pilloried, with Roy Keane caustically suggesting on Sky Sports that he was more suited to Tranmere Rovers than Madrid; he was also dribbled past 11 times by Jeremy Doku in Liverpool’s 2-0 win at Manchester City in March.

In general, however, his defensive work has been much improved this season in a more settled and more structured Liverpool system. That game against United saw a lot of elements combine at once — including, perhaps, a sense of turmoil over his future — and few of those Doku dribbles resulted in a meaningful City chance. For the majority of the campaign, he has defended well.

And his passing remains something to behold. There is a reason Gary Neville, in his co-commentator role for Sky, sounds awe-struck — “Honestly, that is ri-DIC-u-lous” — when watching him. Neville was one of English football’s greatest full-backs, an eight-time Premier League title winner with 85 international caps, but neither he nor any other full-back from his era could have conceived of some of the passes Alexander-Arnold plays, let alone execute them so routinely. Liverpool missed his passing range terribly in the Carabao Cup final defeat by Newcastle.

He is a rare talent. That “greatest right-back to have played football” ambition will no doubt get thrown back at him, but is it so outlandish? Another four or five years performing at his current level — perhaps with another couple of Champions League titles thrown in — could feasibly put him in that conversation along with Dani Alves, Cafu, Carlos Alberto and a handful of others.

That could also have applied had he decided to stay at Liverpool. But it does feel as if, in terms of global legacy, a successful career in Madrid is seen in an even more favourable light. As much as Virgil van Dijk and Salah have been adored during their time on Merseyside, or likewise Kevin De Bruyne and Erling Haaland at Manchester City, there is greater global appreciation — though not necessarily within the club or its fanbase — for world-class players who excel at Barcelona or, in particular, Real Madrid.

That is what Alexander-Arnold wants. He has loved playing for Liverpool and has a great deal to lose by leaving, but he feels he has potentially even more to gain. Playing for Real Madrid never has been and never will be an unreasonable career aspiration.

Perhaps it is harder to reconcile with a self-proclaimed “normal lad from Liverpool” whose dreams have come true, but there was no doubting Alexander-Arnold’s sincerity when he said that, or when he repeated his ambition to be a one-club man in the years that followed.

People change. Their horizons alter. Alexander-Arnold says he wants to “reach for the stars”. Liverpool have given him the opportunity to do that, but he believes that, among the galacticos in Madrid, he will reach even greater heights.

(Top photo: Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)