The day we all knew was coming has finally been and gone. All that’s left for Trent Alexander-Arnold is to take in a short farewell tour before bidding farewell to his boyhood club.
After months of silence, the right-back has finally confirmed what most of us already knew anyway. He won’t be staying, and although he hasn’t confirmed it himself yet, a move to Real Madrid is surely the next step. To quote Kirk van Houten: “So that’s it after 20 years? So long, good luck?”
Perhaps that’s being a bit harsh. After all, Alexander-Arnold has been one of the cornerstones of Liverpool’s success in recent years. Jurgen Klopp practically built his side to get the best out of the academy graduate, and he was on the path to be held in the same esteem as the likes of Steven Gerrard.
That’s what leaves a bitter taste in the mouth for so many supporters. Already vice-captain at the club, he was probably only a couple of years away from realizing his childhood ambition and taking on the armband full-time.
That would have elevated him to a new level in the eyes of so many. And unlike Gerrard, he had the team around him to enjoy the sort of success that only the greats of the teams of the 70s and 80s experienced before him.
Instead, he’s traded that future in for a new challenge at the Bernabeu. You can’t help but be reminded of Klopp’s sage advice to Philippe Coutinho before his move to Barcelona.
“Stay here and they will end up building a statue in your honor,” Klopp famously warned the Brazilian. “Go somewhere else, to Barcelona, to Bayern Munich, to Real Madrid, and you will be just another player. Here you can be something more.”
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That’s not to deny the obvious pull of Los Blancos. Countless players have already been drawn to the bright lights of Madrid, and plenty more will follow in Alexander-Arnold’s footsteps.
But by joining Real, he risks becoming what he clearly never wanted to be – just another player.
It’s a club already littered with huge names. He’ll be joining Kylian Mbappe, Vinicius Jr and, of course, his great friend Jude Bellingham.
Those are the standards he is going to have to live up to now. If he doesn’t, Florentino Perez won’t hesitate to cut ties – just look at how Carlo Ancelotti, Real’s most successful manager of modern times, is being treated at the moment.
But then, Alexander-Arnold is clearly confident in his ability to stand out, even alongside some of those huge names. He wouldn’t be eyeing up a Ballon d’Or if he wasn’t.
“I want to be the first full-back to ever do it,” he said earlier this season. “It’s only the morning after you retire that you’re able to look in the mirror and say, ‘I gave it everything I got’. It doesn’t matter how many trophies you win, or how many medals you’ve got. It matters what you give to the game and if you reach your full potential.”
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The obvious conclusion to reach is that, by joining a club like Real, which is seemingly guaranteed to win the biggest trophies, his chances of realizing that dream will be drastically increased. But is that really the case?
Sure, the award is more open now that the Messi and Ronaldo duopoly on it is over, but is Alexander-Arnold going to have a serious shot at it? After all, if he’s laying on assist after assist to someone like Mbappe, you’d imagine it might be the Frenchman who ends up taking the acclaim. And that’s before you take into account the damage that Real’s tantrum over Vinicius not winning last year might have done.
For a player like Alexander-Arnold, his best chance of winning the Ballon d’Or perhaps lies in competing against a team like Real, not with them. He was already one of the biggest names at Liverpool, and going on to even more success with the Reds may have held him in better stead.
Alas, we’ll never know what kind of difference staying at Anfield could have made. At the very least, he’s giving up becoming one of Liverpool’s true greats – let’s hope, for his sake, it’s worth it.
