Trent Alexander-Arnold 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.” 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 faceto-face with Norwegian grandmaster Magnus Carlsen in a PR-arranged display game of chess. <strong>The</strong> 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.” “You have to understand that football changes in the flick of a second” Rapper J Hus’ new album plays in the background as Trent leans on a weathered guardrail and stares out at a waterlogged pitch, an angry wind rattling the tin roof of the exposed stand to his right. Football has been Trent’s life since the age of six, when he first signed up with Liverpool FC’s Academy, and it was a lower-league club like this grassroots concern on the outskirts of the city that helped him hone his craft. 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. “<strong>The</strong>y 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.” <strong>The</strong> 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.” 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 36 THE RED BULLETIN
“<strong>The</strong> feelings that come with winning, those emotions – that’s the important bit”
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