Trent Alexander-Arnold - the player who will never change your mind

Trent Alexander-Arnold delivered exactly what was expected of him, for good and bad Aitor Alcalde/Getty Images Share full article“It is a very hard decision,” said Thomas Tuchel when explaining to the media last month, why he had once again omitted Trent Alexander-Arnold from his most recent England squad. “He took it on his chin. He will keep on going. I will make sure that I see some matches from Real Madrid, maybe [in the] Champions League to get my last impressions. “He’s on the long list and everyone is still in the mix, but at the moment, some other guys are just ahead of him.” Tuchel was in the Santiago Bernabeu on Tuesday to see Bayern Munich beat Real Madrid in the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final. He will have chuckled warmly at Harry Kane’s terrific goal and general excellence. He might have been slightly concerned that Jude Bellingham didn’t start. He may have quietly rued the dazzling, London-born Michael Olise’s decision to represent France rather than England. But if the primary purpose of his trip was for those “last impressions” of Alexander-Arnold, whose absence from that England squad felt like confirmation that he won’t be going to the World Cup, then it might not have been entirely worth the trip. There are some things that you need years of viewing experience and an appreciation of the game’s subtleties to spot, opinions of nuance and knowledge. A summary of Alexander-Arnold is not necessarily one of them, because if someone was putting together a football starter pack, including a brief glossary of very basic opinions, then ‘Alexander-Arnold is brilliant going forwards but has weaknesses in defence’ would be one of them. And if you wanted a game to act as evidence for that very basic opinion, it was this one. Alexander-Arnold’s defensive deficiencies have always been slightly overblown by his detractors. In this game, there was a terrific piece of one-on-one defending against Luis Diaz early in the first half that probably prevented a goal. But most won’t remember that, after the next time the two faced each other. Maybe it’s too harsh to blame him for Bayern’s first goal. It was terrific movement from Diaz to dart behind Alexander-Arnold and you could argue that Alvaro Carreras was more at fault for lagging behind the defensive line and playing the Colombian onside. But it’s also hard to ignore the fact that he was supposed to be marking Diaz, he lost sight of his man and before he really knew what was happening, the ball was in the net. He was pretty lucky not to give away a goal a short while earlier too, giving possession away in a dangerous spot, an error that firstly went unpunished and was then slightly overshadowed by a similar, and worse piece of carelessness from goalkeeper Andriy Lunin and Thiago Pitarch seconds later. And then there was the good. He created a couple of chances from nothing in the first half, one from a particularly alert example of pressing which led to a tricky shot that was blocked. But the headline act of his game, the moment that many watching will go away thinking about, came in the 74th minute. Real had been knocking on the door with some gusto for a while, but Alexander-Arnold turned his right foot into a combination of a battering ram and a skeleton key to open it and set up Kylian Mbappe for the goal that teed up the second leg perfectly. For a start, his run was smart and penetrating, spotting an avenue of space in the left channel of Bayern’s defence. When he collected the ball on the right side of the box, he probably couldn’t even see Mbappe at the far post, but he knew that if he could put the ball in a very particular spot, the Frenchman would be there. The trouble was that he had a corridor about three yards wide, behind the Bayern defensive line and in front of the area that Manuel Neuer would easily move forward and gobble up any possible cross, into which he could put the ball. He also had to absolutely hammer the cross to get it through that corridor with enough pace, to prevent defenders or goalkeeper from intercepting. It was a cross that a handful of players in the world could pull off. He did it without blinking. 2-1. Tie on. And there you have Trent Alexander-Arnold. Capable of nailing the extraordinary but messing up the mundane. But you already knew that. It’s a basic, boring opinion because it’s true. Alexander-Arnold has always felt like a footballer constantly and unwittingly at the centre of a culture war, someone about whom few people have mild opinions. There are those who point to his flaws as if they are the most obvious things in the world, backed up by a couple of international managers who seem unconvinced about the total package. And then there are those, many from his home town, who are mystified that the world doesn’t see his brilliance, that the good far, far outweighs the bad, another Liverpool player under appreciated by England after the likes of John Barnes and Robbie Fowler. As such, he’s a footballer about whom few will readily change their minds. Nearly a decade after his senior debut, impressions are set in concrete, not to be shifted. The trouble being, that he often doesn’t give anyone much cause to change their minds. He will reliably serve up evidence for both sides of the debate. As he did in this game. So if Tuchel travelled to Madrid looking for something new, something to persuade him that he made a mistake in choosing Ben White over Alexander-Arnold in his last squad, he probably will not have seen it. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Nick Miller is a football writer for the Athletic and the Totally Football Show. He previously worked as a freelancer for the Guardian, ESPN and Eurosport, plus anyone else who would have him. Follow Nick on Twitter @NickMiller79