Soccer (Football)
Meet Liverpool's legend in the making Trent Alexander-Arnold
At 21, Liverpool FC star Trent Alexander-Arnold has achieved more than most players do in a lifetime – we met up with the Champions League winner to learn what drives him to add to his haul of medals.
Trent Alexander-Arnold’s eyes widen when he sees our photographer’s Mamiya RZ67 camera. It’s a resolutely old-school choice that, she explains, shoots with rolls of film rather than digitally like “a proper camera” (his words). “Isn’t that risky?” the 21-year-old Liverpool and England right-back asks in soft, slightly incredulous Liverpudlian tones, like a schoolboy trying to get his head around the design of a penny-farthing.
Football is largely a risk-averse business. Risk is sending on a player who’s not 100 per cent match-fit, or a goalkeeper rushing into the opposition’s penalty area for a last-minute – potentially game-salvaging – corner; decisions born of expediency or sheer desperation. Yet, for all the predictability engendered by strategic planning and game management, football can still serve up flashes of inspired improvisation.
Liverpool v Barcelona
One such moment occurred at Anfield during the second leg of Liverpool’s Champions League semi-final against Spanish giants Barcelona in May last year. Three-nil down after the first leg, the English club had clawed back the result to 3-3 on aggregate and needed a fourth goal to progress to the final.
With just 11 minutes of normal time left, there’s a Liverpool corner, and up steps Trent to take it at the Kop end. But when he reaches the ball, he pauses, then turns and begins to walk away as if leaving it to another player. Suddenly, quick as a flash, he turns back and, sensing that the Barça defence have let down their guard, sends a pinpoint cross into the box for teammate Divock Origi to side-foot into the net.
This audacious act of trickery took Liverpool to the final, which they won 2-0 against Tottenham, and cemented the reputation of Trent – the youngest-ever player to start two consecutive Champions League finals – as one of football’s most exciting and creative talents.
Trent went back to basics at a lower-league club for this photoshoot
© Olivia Rose
Leicester City v Liverpool
Seven months later, on Boxing Day, came arguably his most accomplished performance to date. In a 4-0 away win against title-chasing rivals Leicester City, Trent contributed to all four goals – scoring one, assisting two more, and taking the corner that led to the penalty for the fourth – as well as keeping a clean sheet.
He capped this off with a crossed-armed goal celebration in a nod to Paris Saint-Germain’s footballing wunderkind Kylian Mbappé. “I think I had it planned for about two months,” Trent admits. “I was just waiting to score – and I don’t that often.” Mbappé approved of the homage, telling BBC Sport, “I’m proud. This guy is amazing.”
World Record
In October last year, Trent was awarded the Guinness World Record for the most Premier League assists – 12 – by a defender in a single season; this season, he has already equalled that number, with nine league games still to play. Since breaking into the Liverpool first team in 2016, Trent has redefined the role of playmaker – the creative player who controls attacking play and provides goalscoring opportunities for others.
Conventionally, this is the domain of a central midfielder or winger, but Trent is performing the role from the traditionally unfashionable full-back position. While not the first-ever attacking right-sided defender – the likes of Cafu and Dani Alves (both Brazilians, both heroes of Trent’s) have dazzled in the role over the past 30 years – the young Liverpool player is arguably the greatest exponent in the world today. Cafu himself named Trent a possible future winner of the Ballon d’Or, the annual award presented to the world’s best player. “I can’t thank him enough,” Trent says, humbly. “Legends don’t need to say those kinds of things.”
I used to show too much anger and disappointment; I had to learn to make things right on the pitch
Cool-headedness, precision and speed of thought have become Trent’s trademarks. Few eyebrows were raised, then, when in October 2018 the footballer was brought face-to-face with Norwegian grandmaster Magnus Carlsen in a PR-arranged display game of chess. The self-professed chess fan – taught the game as a child by his father – lasted just 17 moves against the pro, but at least he bettered Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates (beaten after only nine). Is such strategic thinking an advantage in his own field of expertise, transferable from the board to the pitch?
“You could link football to chess in terms of trying to think one, two or three moves ahead of the opposition and anticipate what they’ll do,” he says. “You have to think ahead and know what you’re kind of going to do before you receive the ball. Before I get it, I try to get a picture of what it’ll look like as I’m receiving it and as I’m going to pass it. I’ll look to see where the attackers are. If the attackers aren’t in positions to go in behind, then I’ll know I can’t do that before I even get the ball. If I look and see that they are, that’s an option for me.
But you have to understand that football changes in the flick of a second, and that by the time you put your head down and bring it back up, everything’s changed. Once you’re in the heat of the game, all these things come naturally, and you’re not thinking step by step. It’s just all ‘boom’, happening in the moment.”
“The feelings that come with winning – that’s the important bit”
© Olivia Rose
A lifetime passion
Playing at the Academy sharpened his skills and weeded out any bad habits – “I used to show too much frustration, anger and disappointment; I had to learn to make things right on the pitch rather than beating myself up and letting my head go down” – but it couldn’t sate his hunger. “At that age, you’re only playing two or three times a week,” he says. “I wanted to play more than that, so one of the [Academy] scouts told my mum, ‘I’ve got this team – if you want to bring him on a Sunday morning, you can.’”
In time, Trent and his brothers Tyler (now 25) and Marcel (17) were all turning out for the team, the now-defunct Country Park FC in Croxteth. But when it became clear that Trent’s talents needed space to grow and that his fledgling career was placing pressure on family commitments, his single mum, Dianne, saw that something had to give. “They sacrificed a lot for me to be able to play football when I had to,” Trent admits. “It must have been difficult for an older brother who was missing out on football because of his younger brother. And likewise a younger brother who isn’t really allowed to enjoy the same freedom in football as us, because he has to miss certain games to come and watch me play.”
If you can make something competitive, you put more into it
The close and supportive relationship Trent enjoyed with his brothers also fomented a fiercely competitive streak seemingly at odds with his humble, somewhat introverted persona. His competitiveness on a scale of one to 10? “Er, nine? If not 10,” he concedes. “Yeah, I’d probably say 10.” This edge remains an integral part of what he does, right down to his training: “If you can make something competitive, you put more into it. If you were to ask me to pass the ball for ages against a wall or do as many keepy-ups as I can, I’d get bored. But if someone’s next to me and you said, ‘See who drops it first,’ I’d go for a lot longer.”
Playing for the Liverpool youth team in 2007
© Trent Alexander-Arnold
Teenage years
At the age of 14, at the behest of the Academy, Trent transferred schools from the fee-paying St Mary’s College in Crosby to Rainhill High School, an institution with links to Liverpool FC that allows young players to balance academic studies with their sports training. He passed seven GCSEs, two of which he had to sit remotely in between training and playing for the England under-16s team in Belgium. “It was intense juggling both,” he admits. “But for me and my family, education was just as important, if not more, because the likelihood of making it as a footballer was so slim. For most lads of my age, it wouldn’t work out – those were just the statistics. But I always dreamt of football and felt it was a realistic option if I worked hard enough.
“It wasn’t as if I was overly confident that I would make it; it was just I never thought I wouldn’t. It was, ‘I need to put the work in, and it can happen.’ I always had belief and I always envisioned that I’d play for Liverpool one day.”
The transition from fan to first-team player was daunting, he admits. The young lad who would sneak peeks into the club’s training ground, Melwood, though gaps in the fencing, and who, at the age of just six, watched the 2005 Champions League-winning LFC squad parade triumphantly past his front door in the Liverpool suburb of West Derby in an open-top bus, suddenly found himself sharing a changing-room bench with the players he still idolised.
You have to understand that football changes in the flick of a second
“The season before I went up into the first team, I was still going to the games as a fan,” Trent says. “So these people were massive role models to me. But when you get thrown into the changing room with them, you can no longer think as a fan; they’re your teammates and you have to communicate with them. Hendo [team captain Jordan Henderson] played a big part in helping me do that; making me feel like I had a presence in the changing room, and that I could speak.”
A club legend?
In 2020, Trent’s profile is at a peak. Each new day moves him closer to his dream of being a club legend while also bringing plaudits from footballing stars on social media or sports TV: Gary Lineker, Steven Gerrard, Cesc Fàbregas, Rio Ferdinand... In July last year, he was immortalised in a huge mural just minutes from the Anfield stadium. “I was lost for words when I first saw it,” Trent says. The artwork, spray-painted by French graffiti artist Akse and commissioned by Liverpool FC fan podcast The Anfield Wrap, was created to highlight the local Fans Supporting Foodbanks campaign and, of course, to pay tribute to a player who, along with his teammates, gives back so much to the city through his charitable work and on-pitch success.
Fame, of course, comes with constraints. When there’s a three-storey-high likeness of you on a wall close to your workplace, and your team is on course to comfortably win the Premier League, there’s little option to fade into the shadows. When England’s top league took its first-ever winter break, in February, this respite allowed Trent to spend time in Miami with friends – hanging out, doing some light training – and he was surprised and pleased at the “fair bit of attention” he received from fans at a basketball game. Doing something similar in his hometown wouldn’t be so easy...
“It’s not that achievable any more [in Liverpool],” he admits. “You understand that there are certain places you can no longer go to. But then the people around you understand that it’s not an option. You adapt. [The fame is] all part and parcel of what I do. As a kid, that’s all you ever want: for people to want your autograph, to want their picture taken with you. I dreamt of this life, you know. But then there are times when you need to escape from that. I need to be a normal 21-year-old who goes home and plays FIFA with his mates, sits in his bedroom and just watches TV and does normal things.”
I always had belief and I always envisioned that I would play for Liverpool one day
At home – he now lives outside Liverpool – Trent can take stock of the craziness of his predicament, reflect on his victories and lick his wounds in defeat.
The sting of the latter is incessant, he says. “I’d say disappointment stays with you a lot longer than the joy of a game. In the end you’ve just got to put it past you.” But surely victory is worth replaying? “No, I wouldn’t rewatch a game just to get some joy out of it; to think, ‘Oh yeah, I had a good game.’ There are certain games I’ve never seen, like [last year’s] Champions League final. I’ve never felt the need. The most important thing is recalling the emotions I felt, and the celebrations with my family and the fans.”
Liverpool stand on the brink of winning their long-sought-after first Premier League title in 30 years. Does Trent think that experiencing the victory as a player will be more potent than if he was still that fan watching from the stands?
“I don’t think so. I think you get more joy as a fan, because you can’t influence it. You’ve got no power over whether we do it again. I felt that way from the Champions League. Even though it’s amazing, it doesn’t stop the hunger. You have your little bit of joy and you’re in the moment, but as soon as we were able to just go home, it was, ‘How can we do it again? How can we keep doing this?’ If you look at players who have won everything, like Ronaldo or Messi, you don’t see them resting and thinking, ‘This is enough.’ I could never imagine that anything would stop that hunger.”
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