Trent Alexander-Arnold and the end of a Liverpool fairy tale

When Liverpudlians really respect a footballer, especially a local one, familiarity follows.

Steven Gerrard, the club’s garlanded former captain, was “Stevie”; “Carra“ referred to Jamie Carragher, a long-serving and distinguished centre-half. Trent Alexander-Arnold became known simply as “Trent”, and name-checked with the kind of casual affection that suggested his number was punched into the phone of everyone in the city.

He was one of them, an ordinary Scouser achieving extraordinary things: playing 100 games and winning the Champions League by the time he was 21; helping end a 30-year wait for a domestic championship and destined, surely, to become the club’s captain.

Instead, aged 26, he is walking away. Alexander-Arnold will not be renewing his contract at the end of a 2024-25 campaign that has ended with another Premier League title, with his future now seemingly tied to Spain. He is expected to move to Real Madrid on a free transfer in the coming weeks. 

It is the end of a very modern kind of fairy tale, of the local boy who dreamed of leading the club he grew up supporting but who has now turned his back on them. 

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As a child, Alexander-Arnold waited outside Liverpool’s old Melwood training ground and peered through the gaps in the grey walls, trying to get a glimpse of his heroes.

He grew up just a short walk away. The family home was on the Queens Drive ring road that arcs around the east of the city, from working class Bootle in the north to the more prosperous Aigburth in the south. 

West Derby is roughly at the halfway point, bordering Norris Green and Croxteth, areas which over the last couple of decades have become synonymous with gangs and gun crime. West Derby has largely managed to avoid a bad reputation, one instead defined by Melwood, the facility where Bill Shankly refined his alchemical arts and turned Liverpool from a second-tier team drawing crowds of under 30,000 into one of the world’s most famous football clubs. 

If anything, Alexander-Arnold’s family background had more direct links with Manchester United, Liverpool’s great rivals and the team they have drawn level with on 20 league titles.

His mother’s cousin, John Alexander, worked as United’s club secretary, while, even more remarkably, Sir Alex Ferguson — United’s legendary manager — revealed in his autobiography that his first serious girlfriend was Doreen Carling, Alexander-Arnold’s maternal grandmother. Carling subsequently moved to New York City, where she married, meaning that Alexander-Arnold was eligible to play for the United States national team. 

Alexander-Arnold’s arrival at Liverpool involved some fortune. As a pupil at St Matthew’s Primary School on Queens Drive, he was drawn out of a hat to attend a summer camp at the academy in Kirkby. Towards the end of that period, his mother Diane was approached by Liverpool — but the club had a problem. Registration rules meant they were unable to sign him for another year, and this instead led to him joining a junior team with links to the academy. At Country Park, Liverpool were able to maintain a close eye on his development and keep their rivals from taking him away. 

Alexander-Arnold played as a centre-forward back then. The team would generally win convincingly, and once they had established a lead, he would drop in at centre-back to protect it.

On one occasion, Country Park had a corner and Alexander-Arnold wanted to take it. A warning came his way: if the opponent broke away and scored, it would be his fault. It seemed as though that might happen until Alexander-Arnold sprinted back towards his own goal and stretched out his leg to trip up the opposition forward. Rather than scolding him, the coaches realised it said everything about his desire, even at a very early age.

He would slowly learn about professional standards. At Liverpool’s academy, when his team lost, he took defeat badly and sometimes his behaviour at home suffered. With his father, Michael, a businessman who once traded in commodities, often working away in London, Diane was in charge and she would call Kirkby, telling the coaches she wasn’t going to allow her son to attend the next training session.

Figures at Liverpool became used to this process and played along. Most of the time, Alexander-Arnold would show up despite the threats. Diane thought he was intelligent enough to go to university one day, probably studying something relating to sport. But it was football he loved most.

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Alexander-Arnold had no idea he was making his first Premier League start for Liverpool — at Manchester United, of all places, in January 2017 — until he was told by Jurgen Klopp at lunchtime on the day of the game. His reaction was to rush to his hotel room and call Diane, who started to cry.

Following a 1-1 draw and a fearless individual performance from the 18-year-old, it would be another three months before his next start in the top flight and on that occasion at Stoke, he was hauled off at half-time with Liverpool losing 1-0. In his absence, they turned it around to win 2-1.

Internally at Liverpool, there was always a sense that Alexander-Arnold had a chance of establishing himself. When Steven Gerrard met reporters at Anfield in the summer of 2017, he finished the interview by predicting, “Trent is going to be a beauty.” 

Gerrard, Liverpool’s greatest figure in the 21st century, was two years out from leaving the club as a player, but after returning as an academy coach, having watched closely the talent coming through in his final years as captain, he could see something of himself in the teenager. Like Gerrard, he was unafraid to embrace pressure and expectation.

Having turned 19 later that year, Alexander-Arnold told reporters it was his “dream” to lead the club and that he would “not be satisfied” until he had done so. Gerrard’s exit had left a void in the Liverpool team in all sorts of ways but especially in terms of identity: between 2015 and 2017, Liverpool was missing a local heartbeat, as well as a connection with the past. Gerrard had been coached by Steve Heighway, one of Shankly’s fledgling players. If a baton had been passed between generations, now it had been dropped. Alexander-Arnold was there to pick it up.

Representing Liverpool as a local player is an honour, but it can also be a burden. Shankly used to send his team out with the message “Don’t let them down”, and there is an unusual, almost civic responsibility that comes with playing for the club and the city it is named after. When Carragher filled in for Gerrard as captain, he would cancel any post-match arrangements if the team lost, aware of the optics of being seen to be revelling in the aftermath of a defeat. 

Away from the pitch, the demands and constraints placed on homegrown talents can test their loyalty. Even Gerrard considered leaving, for Chelsea in 2005,  although that was also because he thought there was a higher chance of sustained success in west London. Yet it tends to be that if a local player leaves Anfield, it is because the club has decided. 

Alexander-Arnold’s experience was slightly different to each of his Merseyside-born predecessors. While he eventually decided to move to Cheshire, escaping some of the glare of living in the city, the Liverpool team that emerged under Klopp was better than the one Roy Evans created or the ones that Gerrard and Carragher came to define.

Ultimately, he would win the Premier League twice — a feat Gerrard and Carragher never achieved once — but even before that, his status was inscribed into stone, with a mural painted on Sybil Road in the shadow of Anfield. It still bears the quote uttered after the Champions League final triumph in 2019: “I’m just a normal lad from Liverpool whose dream has just come true.” Except, everything that Alexander-Arnold was achieving was anything but normal.

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In the summer of 2023, Alexander-Arnold was two years out from the end of his Liverpool contract. His sixth season in the first team had finished with unprecedented disappointment: a fifth-place finish in the Premier League meant the following campaign would, for the first time, not involve Champions League football.

Ordinarily, conversations between a club of Liverpool’s stature and a player of Alexander-Arnold’s ability and age profile would have started around this time, but the line of communication was cold. In previous contract negotiations, terms were discussed with Michael Edwards before the sign-off came from Liverpool’s president, Mike Gordon. With Edwards leaving the club and his successor Julian Ward resigning, Liverpool were struggling to source a sporting director willing to work with a manager in Klopp, whose power had increased significantly. Meanwhile, Fenway Sports Group put the club up for sale towards the end of 2022, with Gordon also stepping aside from his duties.

It did not seem like Liverpool were heading in the right direction. Eventually, a temporary solution was found with Klopp hiring his own sporting director, but German Jorg Schmadtke was only allowed to deal with first-team transfers under the direction of the manager.

It was unclear who was dealing with player retention — with Gordon returning to the scene briefly, it was thought that he would take over, but as the months went by, and meaningful dialogue did not take place, the situation drifted. Though Liverpool picked up on the pitch and threatened to win another Premier League title, the possibility fizzled away after Klopp announced his intention to leave in January 2024, increasing the uncertainty across the club.

Alexander-Arnold had come to think of himself as an “elite” athlete, referencing the term several times in interviews. At best, Liverpool were in transition, just at the point where a contract impasse was forcing him to think about his own future.

Yet none of this had hindered his own quest for self-improvement. The summer of 2023 started in Portland, Oregon, at the headquarters of his then-boot sponsor, Under Armour. After mountain hiking and high-altitude training, he told reporters that he was returning to Merseyside in the best shape of his career. A few weeks later, on the club’s pre-season tour of South East Asia, he was appointed as Liverpool’s vice-captain.

It was another marker of personal progress, but this was not aligning with the club’s achievements. In 2022, he had suggested that Liverpool had to win at least one trophy a season for it to be considered a good one, and underlined the scale of his own ambition by refusing to put his Champions League and Premier League winner’s medals on display at his home. “Right now, the only thing that matters is getting another one,” he told The Times in 2020.

In the four years that followed, there were two League Cup final victories, as well as one in the FA Cup. Though Liverpool pushed to win the Premier League title twice during the same period, and lost in a Champions League final to Real Madrid for the second time in Alexander-Arnold’s career, the team ultimately fell short. With Klopp now due to leave, how long would it take for his successor to restore them to their perch?

In the circumstances, it was hardly surprising that Alexander-Arnold began to contemplate what a future might look like elsewhere. It remains unclear at which point he told Liverpool of his intention to move on, or how strongly the club made a play of keeping him. Yet there is no doubt owner Fenway Sports Group missed the opportunity to intercept him casting side-glances in the final 12 months of the Klopp era.

Alexander-Arnold had learned very early in his professional career that there was a risk in standing still: very quickly, you might end up going backward. Such an attitude was influenced heavily by the footballers around him at Melwood — Jordan Henderson, James Milner, Adam Lallana and Dejan Lovren, none of whom took anything for granted. The young Alexander-Arnold would follow them upstairs at Melwood to watch what they were eating and study their attitude in training.

Back at the academy, everything was laid out for him through development programmes and one-on-one meetings with coaches, who told him what he needed to work on and how he should lead his life. At the senior level, it was every player for himself — there was less guidance about what to do away from the training ground. It all helped him become more independent-minded.

Alexander-Arnold would see less-talented players trying desperately to force their way into Klopp’s thinking. Kevin Stewart, his elder by five years, played 20 times for Liverpool before leaving for Hull City just as Alexander-Arnold was about to establish himself as the team’s right back. In some training sessions, Stewart used only his left foot to try and stimulate improvement and Klopp gave him chances because of his bravery. If Alexander-Arnold wanted to join him, he realised he had to do the same. Throughout his Liverpool career, he was never afraid of risk and his game was defined by such spirit.

On his European debut, Alexander-Arnold scored a free kick for Liverpool at Hoffenheim, and the responsibility stayed with him throughout his Liverpool career despite interest from Mohamed Salah and Virgil van Dijk, who would challenge him in free-kick competitions after training sessions.

When footage was released by the club’s media channels in 2020, Alexander-Arnold was annoyed because Van Dijk’s conversion rate was better. This was just before the Covid-19 pandemic, a period that allowed him to retreat to his Cheshire garden, where he trained alone, taking shots so often at a specially-bought goal that he ended up destroying the frame.

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Alexander-Arnold’s dedication to maximising his football talent is matched by his determination to fulfil his commercial potential.

As his career has blossomed, so have his endorsements: Adidas replaced Under Armour as his boot supplier in November 2023, agreeing to give him one of the biggest boot deals in football in the process, and he has long been an ambassador for Red Bull, the energy drinks company. 

These deals often came with some kind of sporting dimension — Red Bull, for example, sent him on a vision-training programme in June 2021 to help increase his spatial awareness — but not always. 

In November 2024, two months after he had told ITV that his priority to win the Ballon d’Or and “change the game” now eclipsed his ambition to captain Liverpool, a billboard for Guess Jeans appeared in the centre of Madrid. The male model dressed in denim? Alexander-Arnold.

Though the same advert had appeared in Italian and Dutch cities over the previous months, and Alexander-Arnold has long had an interest in fashion (he has attended Milan and Paris Fashion Weeks in recent years), it was the installation in Felipe II square which ramped up speculation that the player was beginning to expand his horizons beyond England’s north-west. 

While FSG continues to try to find ways to maximise Liverpool’s reach, Madrid is established as football’s greatest global force. And while Alexander-Arnold retains a close bond with his family (his brother, Tyler, is a key figure in his representation), his outlook is now markedly global. 

That opens up the world both in a sporting and economic sense — a point he has presumably recognised in his friend Jude Bellingham, whose own commercial appeal has rocketed since he moved to the Bernabeu from Borussia Dortmund.

Alexander-Arnold is an intelligent man, with a head for strategy (he is one of several Premier League players to enjoy chess, along with his team-mate Salah), and it is inconceivable that he has not spent significant time thinking about and plotting his career path. 

The video he posted on his social media platforms announcing his Liverpool departure, delivered in candid straight-down-the-camera fashion, with a suitably sombre piano soundtrack, was also carefully curated. He was keen to stress that his decision was “not about trying to find something better” but about his “personal journey as a player”.

After 20 years at Liverpool Football Club, now is the time for me to confirm that I will be leaving at the end of the season.

This is easily the hardest decision I’ve ever made in my life.

I know many of you have wondered why or been frustrated that I haven’t spoken about this… pic.twitter.com/emAw5RvXq0

— Trent Alexander-Arnold (@TrentAA) May 5, 2025

There is, however, an irony that Alexander-Arnold is leaving Liverpool just when the club look better placed than at any point since the 2020 title win to emerge as English football’s dominant force.

Another Premier League title is secure. Their rivals, too, are in states of flux: Manchester City, their nemesis in recent seasons, have fallen away and are rebuilding; Chelsea are a young squad and Manchester United remain a long way from restoring themselves to their former greatness. Arsenal had looked capable of sustaining a challenge in the title race, but have fallen short for the third year running.

The curious timing gives another twist to the question that fans are now pondering: what is his legacy at Liverpool?

Alexander-Arnold will certainly be remembered as a great player. But one of the greatest? Sadly not. Even Gerrard did not stay forever, but he was almost shoved out of the club, forcing him to agree a deal elsewhere. Even then, he could not bring himself to put himself in a place where he might have to face Liverpool. Los Angeles Galaxy guaranteed that.

Madrid offers no such certainty for Alexander-Arnold. The Spaniards have been regular opponents for Liverpool in European competition over the last decade, and it seems inconceivable that the player’s path will not cross his old club’s in the coming years. 

In his farewell video, Alexander-Arnold acknowledged that his move was unlikely to be popular. It had been, he said, an “emotional” decision but that his love for the club “will never diminish” and he hoped to return to watch games “whenever possible”.

Quite what reception he would be afforded by Anfield is open to question. Liverpool supporters do not generally turn on their own, but reputations at the club are sometimes defined by final acts.

And while the memory of his late goal at Leicester City, which heaved his team closer to the title, will be treasured, there will be some lingering bitterness at watching him depart for nothing, even if the posters that appeared around Anfield last month branding him a ‘traitor’ did not reflect the views of the majority.

For most, he will always be “Trent” and remembered fondly as a key figure in the Klopp revolution that delivered virtually every trophy that was worth winning.

Yet the fact is another club will now benefit from what are likely to be his best years as a player. And that means a place in Liverpool’s all-time pantheon may now prove beyond him.

(Top photo: Alex Pantling/Getty Images)