Allez Allez Allez by Simon Hughes

Author:Simon Hughes
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473572744
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2019-06-25T16:00:00+00:00

11. TRENT

THREE GOALS FROM THREE PERFECT CROSSES, ONE VIA A FREE-KICK – and a 5–0 win for Liverpool against Watford, just about keeping them top. A hat-trick of assists for Trent Alexander-Arnold, the local player in the team he loves. No longer a teenager, he is Liverpool’s attacking right-back. The staff at the club’s academy predicted he’d emerge as a marauding midfielder, until they saw him function in a role Jürgen Klopp identified as essential, one which led to more goals being created by Liverpool’s full-backs than any other position during the 2018–19 season.

Trent, as Liverpool supporters now called him having taken ownership of his first name in the same way they did with the local superstar that went before him in Steven Gerrard, was born and brought up in a house close to the club’s training ground in West Derby – an area of Merseyside where all of the bins are purple. They are dark grey in Sefton – a separate borough to the north of the city that begins in Bootle and ends all the way up in Southport, which is closer to Preston and feels more like Lancashire than Merseyside. It was in southern Sefton where Trent was educated and where he went to what was primarily a rugby-playing, fee-paying school.

‘A flying full-back for the rugby team but a centre-forward for the football team,’ recalled Derek Williams, his physical education teacher, who reflected the sporting priorities by mentioning rugby first at an institution where football, in fact, fell behind cricket.

Trent had gone to St Mary’s because his intelligence meant he could pass the exams to gain entry while his mum, Dianne, had won a bursary for each of her three boys. Trent was the middle child, between Tyler, the eldest, and Marcel. Trent’s father Mikey worked away in London to support his family, leaving Dianne to install focus and discipline in her children’s lives.

It made the papers when Williams, a short and stocky sports fanatic, had once caught a burglar by making a citizen’s arrest having spotted a thief preparing to enter a house from a school window during break-time. After handing him over to the police, hundreds of pupils cheered him as he returned to the school’s premises through the playground. He was an all-thinking, all-action sort of character, believing in Trent’s talents with the rugby ball because he saw how good he was at football, and he anticipated his athletic skills were transferable. Initially, though, Trent was unsure of his responsibilities. ‘I told him full-back in rugby was like being a sweeper in football: “Stay in line with the ball and when you catch it, run with it and put it down behind those posts down there.” That’s exactly what he did,’ said Williams. ‘The first time he got the ball, he ran the full 80 metres. I was shouting, “Put it down!” He then took the penalty kick as well … he was that sort of lad.’

Jan van Deventer, a South African rugby player

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