“He chose to start from zero. To keep showing up, day by day. It was about respect, courage and a genuine desire to belong. What I saw was a person growing beyond himself. In football, words can build trust, connection, identity. That is what true professionalism really looks like.” Well, at least someone is pleased with Trent Alexander-Arnold’s progress at Real Madrid. Unfortunately, it happens to be Sara Duque, his language teacher.
When Alexander-Arnold filmed a video in hesitant but really very good Spanish for Duque’s Instagram page, it’s fair to say it wasn’t received entirely in the spirit of pride and achievement it was intended. Very quickly, internet auditors started to do the maths. Alexander-Arnold claimed to have been learning Spanish for five months, which meant he must have started in May, when – gasp – he was still under contract at Liverpool. Rat, scum, traitor, etc. Perhaps, judging by how well he spoke at his unveiling in June, he had been under Duque’s tutelage even earlier. All of which brought to mind the old Frank Skinner joke (although others have claimed it) about John Lennon airport. A fitting tribute, seeing as it was the first place he went after making a bit of cash.
Does it really matter when Alexander-Arnold started learning Spanish? Obviously not. Jacob Ramsey is learning French, and nobody at St James’s Park is suggesting a move to Paris Saint-Germain any time soon. The point is how quickly these morsels and snippets get co-opted into a wider narrative, a self-reinforcing cycle of bad choices and bad karma, folly and fall, one in which Alexander-Arnold’s first few months at Madrid would appear to fit seamlessly.
This week, for example, he will have plenty of time to polish his Spanish given he has been left out again from Thomas Tuchel’s England squad. Last week his return to Anfield was marked by boos from the crowd and the defacing of his mural on Sybil Road, timed by incredible coincidence to attract maximum attention before Liverpool’s Champions League game against Real.
Meanwhile, Alexander-Arnold has found himself injured for much of the season and on the bench for much of the rest. Fede Valverde has been preferred at right-back by Xabi Alonso, despite the injury to Dani Carvajal and the fact Valverde isn’t really a right-back. There are whispers that Alonso doesn’t remotely rate him, that he prefers a hard-running, all-action tackler in the role, that Alexander-Arnold has looked troubled, overawed, lost. “He comes from a big club, but he’s arrived on a different planet,” wrote Jorge Valdano in his The Country column.
The sober assessment would be that Alexander-Arnold hasn’t really had a chance yet. That he has been struggling for fitness and will be gradually integrated into Alonso’s system at a point in its evolution when his weaknesses might be less damagingly exposed. But, of course, this jars violently with the prevailing Trent orthodoxy, one in which a Liverpool legend detonates his career, blows his World Cup chances and ends up as a 27-year-old punchline already being spoken about in the past tense.
And frankly this is a conscious decision, driven in large part by the internet economy and its unquenchable thirst for fresh marks. Watch how the Amazon Prime cameras cut effortlessly to a shot of Alexander-Arnold on the bench as Liverpool score the only goal of the game last week: an explicit editorial call, the real-time result of a producer shouting: “Get me Trent,” because this is what the story demands.
None of this is to cast judgment on Alexander‑Arnold’s choices, or indeed those of the Liverpool fans who turned on him. Is there a certain hypocrisy there in their treatment of Alexander-Arnold for forcing through a transfer, and their treatment of Alexander Isak for forcing through a transfer? Of course there is. They’re not elected officials or the BBC. To demand that the views of football supporters be held to an objective standard of proof is basically to miss the point of fandom entirely. Everyone here is simply playing their role, trying to extract maximum personal capital from this shared diorama.
All the same: something interesting is definitely happening here, a little window into the way discourse and narrative have a real-world impact on the way players are judged and perceived. In recent years there has been an increasingly pervasive theory that the future of football fandom would be oriented around players rather than teams. That we lived in the era of the superstar cult – the Messi stan, the Ronaldo bro – and that clubs would essentially become a vehicle for personal devotion.
Like most football theories, it had a kernel of truth but was essentially a bit of a stretch. Beyond the anomalous talents of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, and perhaps Kylian Mbappé and Erling Haaland, does anybody actually meaningfully back a player over a club? Do people really support Harry Kane? Is there an Ousmane Dembélé community out there? Are there non-Barcelona fans who venerate Lamine Yamal? Are there fans of Phil Foden or Lautaro Martínez? Can the personal appeal of Son Heung-min or James Rodríguez be separated from a broader, nationality-based allegiance?
By and large, the biggest men’s clubs remain the biggest brands in the sport. And nowhere is this more evident than with Alexander-Arnold, a player whose biggest misstep – in brand terms – has been his decision to forsake the Liverpool fanbase and its immense soft power. These days, performances are no longer enough on their own. You need advocates, adherents, a base, people to stand up for you on the internet and argue your case in the media, people to challenge the perplexing and increasingly prevalent view that a Champions League-winning defender “can’t defend”.
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And overwhelmingly these constituencies are still drawn on tribal lines. Influencers and television pundits are now club‑aligned, permanently online, and will inevitably take their cue from social media discourse. Jamie Carragher was critical of Liverpool fans for booing Alexander-Arnold in their 2-2 draw with Arsenal in May, saw which way the wind was blowing, and now accuses him of “hoodwinking” supporters. Perhaps in time Alexander-Arnold will reap the benefits of the considerable Real Madrid PR machine. But it’s a tough ask when he can’t even get a start.
So who, now, will speak up for the maligned, marginalised Alexander‑Arnold? Well, I’ll have a go. And perhaps I should declare my own bias too: I am instinctively drawn to mercurial and misunderstood players, players who gild the game rather than dominate it, players who prod at the boundaries of the possible. Give me Mesut Özil over Alexis Sánchez. Give me Paul Pogba over Bruno Fernandes. Give me Jude Bellingham over Declan Rice. Give me Eden Hazard over Cole Palmer, give me Dele Alli over Kane.
These are players who would basically be impossible to invent from scratch because their profile barely even existed before they came along. There has arguably never been a right-back like Alexander-Arnold, a defender who isn’t really a defender at all, possessed with the poise and touch and range of a great midfielder. Alexis Mac Allister recently described him as the best passer of a football he’s ever seen, and he played with Messi. That’s not to say he’s the best or the greatest, full stop. But there’s not a huge amount out there to compare him to. Partly that’s the problem. Particularly at England level, where the impulse is understandably to fit the available talent into an existing template.
I love the fact that he is clearly cerebral, introverted and quiet, but also the fact he wants to win the Ballon d’Or as a right‑back and came right out and said it, and that he would prefer to do that than win a World Cup, and didn’t care what anybody thought about him saying it. Secretly, I love the fact that Liverpool are struggling in his absence, that Mohamed Salah looks a fraction of the right winger he was without the right‑back who generated such possibility for him.
Words can build trust, connection, identity. Duque was right about that part. A last-minute injury to Reece James and Alexander-Arnold is probably back in the World Cup squad. A run of games for Real and perhaps he can relax a little, learn his role, unleash the stinging crosses and pinpoint long balls that have always been his unique talent. Trent can overcome. But – if he doesn’t know it yet – he’s probably going to have to do the heavy lifting himself.
