Trent Alexander-Arnold has broken football’s oldest rule with Real Madrid transfer | Football

When Trent Alexander-Arnold leaves Liverpool to join Real Madrid this summer, a move which reports indicate he is on the verge of finalising, he will do so having won every major honour in football.

Winner’s medals for the Premier League, Champions League, FA Cup, League Cup, Charity Shield, Super Cup, and Club World Cup will be shipped from Merseyside to Madrid alongside the kind of knick-knacks and bric-a-brac the rest of us are used to sorting through when moving house.

Over the course of nine years since his senior debut, Alexander-Arnold has been a key component of one of the most successful teams in Liverpool’s illustrious history.

The England international has of course worked under stellar managers in that time and played alongside some of the world’s very best players, but an enormous role has undoubtedly been played by his combination of an immense level of technique scarcely shown by any full-back and his ability to make vital contributions in the most crucial moments.

When such a successful player leaves a football club after a long time, they are typically lauded and thanked for their contribution. And yet, Alexander-Arnold is already being viewed by plenty of Liverpool supporters as a despicable traitor whose legacy now lies in tatters.

Advertisement

Why are some Liverpool fans so angry with Trent Alexander-Arnold?

Throughout the season so far, speculation over Alexander-Arnold’s future has been met with consternation and antipathy from a significant proportion of Liverpool’s supporter base. When the Reds drew with Manchester United at Anfield in January, shortly after a renewed series of claims that he was likely to move to Spain for free, he was met with a barrage of booing and name-calling from fans in the stadium almost immediately after kick-off and throughout the rest of the match.

Now that confirmation of a free transfer exit to Carlo Ancelotti’s side seems imminent, demands that the 26-year-old be stripped of the vice captaincy, that he should not play for the club again before the end of the campaign, and that a mural of him near to Anfield should be painted over have become commonplace online.

Alexander-Arnold must shoulder plenty of the blame for the reaction himself. In the autumn he drew criticism for telling Sky Sports that he would rather win a Ballon d’Or than another major trophy with Liverpool.

Then in December, after scoring from outside the box away at West Ham, he celebrated by putting his hand to his ear and mimicking gossip. But the speculation he was seemingly mocking only existed because he was refusing to comment on his future in public, and was indeed negotiating his own exit from his boyhood club. A gesture that seemed bizarre enough at the time is now downright incomprehensible in hindsight.

Furthermore, there is a widespread belief in football that local, home-grown players owe a far greater deal of loyalty to their club than those transferred in from elsewhere. That Alexander-Arnold is leaving Liverpool, at a point in which they seem primed for further success under Arne Slot, and on a free transfer, is a significant factor behind the ire his decision is drawing.

Why might Alexander-Arnold feel leaving Liverpool is the right thing?

Of course, it is hard to rationalise the idea that a millionaire athlete who has accomplished everything with his team could possibly owe anything more to those who have revelled in those achievements for the best of a decade.

Surely it must be possible for such a player to earn the right to go and try their hand at something else, to choose to live a different life, after delivering a cabinet full of trophies and a swathe of stellar days out.

Though Liverpool are well set up to kick on under Slot’s stewardship, if Alexander-Arnold were to stay at Real Madrid for ten years, it would not be unreasonable to presume that – at a bare minimum – he would win something like five league titles and three Champions Leagues, given the rate at which Los Blancos have hoovered up trophies in the 21st century so far.

The counterargument to that is, that having been born and raised in West Derby, winning less with Liverpool should carry more weight than winning near-constantly with Real Madrid. At some point Alexander-Arnold has clearly decided that, despite his roots, he doesn’t buy that argument.

And as for the lack of transfer fee, Liverpool never paid one in the first place for a player who has outperformed all others in his position for the majority of his career so far, and so the idea that he now owes them one in return is illogical.

Alexander-Arnold seems to have felt the same. Four years ago, aged 22, he decided to sign only a four-year deal with Liverpool rather than committing for even longer. That was perhaps an indicator even then that he and those around him have always been planning to be able to move for free at age 26.

More generally, not enough British footballers are willing to try their hand at playing abroad, living in another culture, and testing themselves in a different context. That Harry Kane, Jude Bellingham and now Alexander-Arnold have done so in recent years is perhaps an indication that horizons are broadening among this generation of players.

Is the reaction to Alexander-Arnold’s move to Real Madrid fair?

Football fandom is an inherently irrational pursuit. What a set of supporters would deem perfectly reasonable behaviour from a player at another club is so often deemed ludicrous and offensive when done by one of their own.

That is underscored by the fact that plenty of the same Liverpool supporters who are criticising Alexander-Arnold for walking out on the club he has supported since infancy now were imploring Real Sociedad midfielder Martin Zubimendi to do exactly the same a year ago when the Reds were trying to buy him.

It may be juvenile and immature, but it is also the truth – football fans want everything their own way all the time. They aren’t overly concerned by logic and fairness. And if they don’t get what they want they are liable to respond with outlandish, melodramatic rhetoric, turning on those they once extolled as gods among men and kicking them to the kerb.

Alexander-Arnold is far from the first footballer to move on knowing the incredulous reaction the decision will bring about. By the end of his career, only he will know if he still believes it was the right thing to do.

MORE: Newcastle make move for former Everton striker as Alexander Isak replacement

MORE: Liverpool rejected transfer fee from Real Madrid for Trent Alexander-Arnold

MORE: James stakes his claim while Foden falls flat: The winners and losers from Thomas Tuchel’s first England camp