It may seem a strange thing to say about a man who has won the World Cup, Copa America and Premier League over the past two-and-a-half years, but Alexis Mac Allister’s genius is underrated.
Perhaps this is simply what happens when you play in the same national team as Lionel Messi, and have Mohamed Salah as a club team-mate. Maybe it is down to his unassuming nature. Or could it be his physical size? At Anfield, his fellow midfielders Dominik Szoboszlai and Ryan Gravenberch literally stand out more than the 5ft 9in (176cm) Argentinian.
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For his managers, however, the idea of not appreciating Mac Allister’s gifts is laughable.
“He’s not underrated to me,” Liverpool head coach Arne Slot told reporters before last Sunday’s game against Chelsea. “(He’s a) very important player. Game intelligence, so comfortable on the ball, but what makes him even more special to me is, normally, players that have so much game inside and are so comfortable on the ball are not as aggressive and intense without the ball.
“He is one of the few players in the world who combines this great game intelligence, great on the ball, but (with) a tenacity without the ball. In our midfield, he stands out in terms of tenacity.”
Tenacity is one of Mac Allister’s biggest strengths (Carl Recine/Getty Images)
It is the reason why Mac Allister has been a virtual ever-present in Liverpool’s title-winning midfield, starting 30 of the 35 league games played so far and playing in all but one: the 2-2 draw with Fulham in December when he was suspended.
When Mac Allister plays well, Liverpool tend to play well, and there is a strong case to be made for the 26-year-old being Liverpool’s best performer during the second half of the campaign and someone Slot cannot afford to be without.
Sunday’s trip to Chelsea was only the second time he had been named on the bench in the league since that Fulham match, and Liverpool struggled in his absence, losing 3-1.
The other occasion came at Southampton in March, where he was rested in between the two legs of the Champions League last-16 tie against Paris Saint-Germain.
Title-bound Liverpool were 1-0 down to the Premier League’s bottom club at half-time that day and a starting midfield three of Gravenberch, Curtis Jones and Szoboszlai had struggled to function. Mac Allister was summoned from the bench at the interval and, along with Harvey Elliott, injected speed and impetus into Liverpool’s passing. Elliott got plenty of praise for his role in engineering was ultimately proved a comfortable 3-1 away win but it was Mac Allister who had quietly increased the tempo from deeper.
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As Slot suggests above, he is a complete midfielder, capable of doing the dirty work out of possession while having the technical quality to create and control when he has the ball.
A majority of his touches for Liverpool come in the opposition half, with Gravenberch dropping deeper to receive the ball from defenders and allowing Mac Allister more freedom to push on into more advanced positions. With Liverpool’s control-based system, it helps him to dictate tempo from those advanced central areas and try to unlock defences.
It is slightly surprising that Mac Allister’s highest share of touches comes in the wide left channel, which maybe also helps explain why some of his work goes under the radar.
With an orthodox left-back, either Andy Robertson or Kostas Tsimikas, looking to overlap from behind him and Cody Gakpo or Luis Diaz trying to cut in from the left wing, Mac Allister knits that side of the pitch together, while finding space to pull the strings away from the condensed central areas.
But there is one ‘special skill’ which sets him apart from his peers in the Premier League: his goal-ending sequence starts.
It’s a clunky phrase but is defined by Opta, the data company that measures it, as when a player begins an open-play sequence that ends in a goal for their team.
Mac Allister has done this on 13 occasions in the 2024-25 Premier League, nearly twice as often as any other player in the division, making him the launchpad for Liverpool’s often-lethal attack.
His recent performance against Tottenham, in the 5-1 victory that sealed the title, was arguably his best of the season and while his spectacular 20-yard shot, which put Liverpool 2-1 up having conceded the game’s first goal, was the highlight, he also produced two goal-ending sequence starts.
While it would be natural to interpret this metric as the player making the first pass to start a move, it is not always quite as simple.
For his involvement in Liverpool’s opening goal that day, scored by Diaz, Mac Allister cleverly uses his body to control a loose ball and retain possession for his side, thus starting the attacking move.
The resulting seven-pass sequence ended with Szoboszlai squaring for Diaz to tap home.
In the second instance, Mac Allister wins possession by tackling Dejan Kulusevski on the edge of his own area.
He then plays a simple pass to Szoboszlai, who advances from one penalty box to the other and lays the ball off to Salah, and he then fires a shot into the bottom corner to make it 4-1 and really start the title party.
Both may seem like fairly small contributions to the end result, with other players getting the greater glory of the assist and the goal, but if Mac Allister hadn’t won the ball back in the first place, these attacks would not have been possible.
It is the tenacity that Slot speaks of which has allowed him to be the starting point of so many goals and become so much more effective than anybody else.
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For a player who is more associated with his technical quality in possession, Mac Allister’s defensive numbers can often go under the radar. But what he lacks in physicality and speed, he makes up for in aggression and how he reads the game. Of all Premier League midfielders, only Idrissa Gueye of Everton (124), Wolves’ Joao Gomes (105) and Moises Caicedo of Chelsea (103) have attempted more tackles this season than Mac Allister’s 95.
If he doesn’t successfully press Kobbie Mainoo against Manchester United in September, for example, Salah does not score Liverpool’s third and final goal of that match. And similarly, against West Ham just after Christmas, he dispossesses Carlos Soler and feeds Jones to set up the Egyptian to make it 3-0 in that 5-0 win.
The above is an example of a secondary assist — a pass to a player who then assists a goal — or pre-assist. Only Newcastle’s Bruno Guimaraes (nine) has more of these than Mac Allister (seven) in the Premier League this season.
Below is another example, in the 3-3 away draw with Newcastle on December 4. Mac Allister anticipates and intercepts a Lewis Hall pass before clipping a perfectly weighted ball ahead of Salah, who assists the Jones goal that makes it 1-1.
The 38-time Argentina international ranks 14th among midfielders for possession won in the middle third of the pitch (83).
Another instance of this came before Liverpool’s second goal in the 3-2 away loss against Fulham last month.
Mac Allister has regularly been a source of creativity both at the start of an attacking sequence that ends in a shot for his team (48 this Premier League season) — Caicedo (57) is the only player with more; and his 44 secondary chances created — the pass to a player who then sets up a shot — is only bettered by Manchester United’s Bruno Fernandes (45).
He is not only a facilitator but both a provider and a goalscorer, too. Mac Allister has five goals and five assists in the Premier League this season, but even here his work rate has been a crucial factor, with two of those goals coming because of his off-the-ball work to begin the attack he’d eventually conclude.
In February’s Merseyside derby, he intercepts a pass by Abdoulaye Doucoure and the resulting move ends with him heading home an inswinging Salah cross.
Against Newcastle two weeks later, this time at Anfield, he intercepts a Sandro Tonali pass and drives forward himself. He exchanges passes with Salah before scoring to make it 2-0.
What each example highlights is the well-rounded skill set that Mac Allister possesses.
He performed well in the No 6 role under Jurgen Klopp last season but during conversations with Slot after the new head coach took over in the summer, the South American discussed his preference for playing with a No 6 to help get the best out of him.
Slot agreed, and moving Gravenberch into that position has allowed Mac Allister to flourish — even if the wider world doesn’t always see it.
(Top photo: Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)
