Trent Alexander-Arnold explains how 10,000 hours of football with his brothers made him a world class full-back

David Lynch2 July 2020

Premier League and Champions League winner with his boyhood club at the age of just 21, you’d think Trent Alexander-Arnold might be happy with his lot.

Since emerging from Liverpool’s academy to make his first-team debut less than four years ago, the West Derby-born defender has enjoyed a rise for which the word ‘meteoric’ feels like understatement.

He is not just a regular at senior level, but a key component of the team that brought a sixth European Cup to Anfield last season and ended a 30-year wait for a top-flight championship this term.

And, perhaps worryingly for the Reds’ rivals, he is by no means finished there.

Speaking in an interview conducted for the Red Bull Pro campaign, Alexander-Arnold insisted that only by improving as a player can he ensure that the winner’s medals keeps coming.

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He also highlighted the defensive side of his game as the area he is most determined to address.

“I feel as though there’s so much more that I can be better in, and there's more I want to achieve, and so it’s difficult for me to stop and relax,” he said.

“People might think I’m a bit big-headed, but I know myself that I can get as high as I want to get to, defensively, if I work hard enough for it. I feel as though the sky’s the limit, really.”

Red Bull

Alexander-Arnold is fortunate that, even having achieved so much, complacency was never going to be an issue.

According to the 21-year-old, that is thanks to an upbringing that imbued him with a natural desire to continually come out on top.

He added: “I think me and my brothers definitely hit 10,000 hours (of football). It was quite unhealthy now that I think about it…

“Any type of football game, or any type of weather, at any time of the day, we’d be playing football, the three of us; there was nothing else we did. If it was raining, we’d make goals inside in the hallway, we’d use balls of tin foil, we’d use socks, we’d use literally anything at all to play football.

“It’s down to my brothers that I have that competitiveness. The competitiveness between the three of us was frightening, there’d be tears, they’d be fights, there was everything you can imagine just to win.

“I try and be competitive in training, in anything: in passing drills I try and challenge someone, who makes a mistake first, who’ll score the least goals, obviously [with] me and Robbo [fellow full-back Andrew Robertson], who will get the most assists.

“It just makes me such a better player because I’m focused so much on winning that I put everything that I have into it.”

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Of course, even for a young man with such confidence and drive, those first steps into senior football can be difficult.

Thankfully, Alexander-Arnold had club captain Jordan Henderson guiding him in the early days - a gesture for which the young Scouser is always grateful.

“Hendo [team captain Jordan Henderson] was big,” he added.

“I never really had an amazing bond with any of the lads because I’ve always been quiet, but he just made me comfortable being around them type of lads.

“After that I wasn’t overthinking asking for the ball… so I’d take more risks and, by doing that, I became a better player.”