Loyalty Is A False Currency
Merseyside’s dirtiest bandage has finally been ripped off. According to multiple reports, including the closest thing we’ll get to a preemptive “Here We Go”, Trent Alexander-Arnold will be off to Real Madrid upon the expiration of his contract at the end of this season. Feelings are mixed among the Liverpool fan base. Some want to chide him for stringing us supporters along when he’d been in talks since January. Others want to give him his flowers for all the silverware he helped put in the club’s trophy case. In the end, we all circle back to the same cul-de-sac. Loyalty in sports, especially football, is a dead principle.
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The Ownership’s Role
All contract disputes boil down to a singular battle. The player and his agents put their cards on the table and ownership determines if that hand is beatable or not. In the case of Liverpool FC, neither side was put in a particularly positive light. FSG was viewed as the cheapskates who didn’t pony up the proper funds to keep one of our own. Trent became the ungrateful academy product who became too big for his britches. Fans rarely bounced between the two camps. As this arduous eighteen months wore on, that divide grew wider.
I truly believe that an earnest effort was made to bring our prestigious right-back back into the fold. But in the next breath, you see what Real Madrid put at his feet, and that belief can evaporate. This is where I feel the calls for transparency get the most traction. I still hold out hope that the reasons Virgil van Dijk’s and Mohamed Salah’s extensions haven’t been announced was due to Liverpool’s knowledge that Trent’s tryst with Los Blancos would make him a target for vitriol. Despite the title being nearly in the bag, we only need to look back to last season to see what a departure grenade could do to the team.
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Alas, it is not a prime Manchester City nipping at Liverpool’s heels this campaign. Arsenal have plenty of their own warts to overcome to overcome the massive twelve-point gap. But the timing of this impending departure sucks. I wish I could put that more eloquently but in all honesty, this whole situation doesn’t deserve eloquence. FSG dicked around with the club’s three biggest assets for the better part of two years. For all the calls for loyalty, Trent played the farcical wallflower knowing all along his ultimate intentions. My only hope is as supporters we can power through these last few months without incident.
Placing The Blame
Whenever a fan base feels aggrieved, there is a manhunt for a scapegoat. There can be no nuance. Mitigating factors must be damned. In this case, that blame can be thrown in numerous directions if you want to make any number of charges.
I try to look at what is happening in this situation through several lenses. The blurred vision that comes from that may skew my opinion but nevertheless, I feel it carries merit.
In American sports, the mercenary nature of the business has never been greater. You don’t even need to trudge back to the days of the abolition of the release clause any longer to see how much player empowerment has taken a foothold. NIL in collegiate athletics has seen transfer portal usage quintuple over the past twelve months. Free agency in each sport is viewed as an event unto itself. Loyalty is lauded because it is no longer expected.
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The concept of a one-club player is as dead as disco. You can be upset when a player requests a trade or leaves for greener pastures in free agency, but you get over it fairly quickly. You’ll boo them when they come back once a year but barring messy divorces you’ll put it out of your mind.
I feel in football things are different. Our connections to the club are deeper regardless of distance. I can still tell you the betrayal I felt when Fernando Torres squeezed his way out to Chelsea.
But Trent’s case cuts that much deeper. There is no academy pathway for players into the NBA. Nikola Jokic didn’t come up from the Nuggets Academy from the age of five. TAA was supposed to be a future captain. That was one of his desires in negotiations (sources pending). To throw all that away to be just another Galactico just has a stink to it.
Putting The Shoe On The Other Foot
However, this is where I circle back into the perspective of the player. What does Trent Alexander-Arnold have left to prove at Liverpool FC? He’s been a part of putting every conceivable trophy into the club’s coffers. He’s provided us fans with moments we’ll cherish for generations. You’d have to stretch out a checklist to unreasonable levels to find a box this man hasn’t ticked for us.
Just a summer ago, we all talked about how his relationship with Jude Bellingham was going to lure the Borussia Dortmund midfielder to Anfield. Their social media presence was immense. There was endless chatter about their desire to play together on a club level in addition to the international level. Gareth Southgate’s team selection didn’t give them much of the latter. Real Madrid’s astronomical bid for the talented Bellingham subverted the former. Now with a new coach in Thomas Tuchel and an open door at the Bernabeu, Trent gets a chance to get both bites of the apple.
No Loyalty For Young Men
This development breaks my heart personally. With the way this season has shaken out, we should be in all-out celebration mode. Yes, the vaunted quad was dangled in front of us. But a presumptive league title, a cup final, and bossing the first year of the league phase of the Champions League should have us all in the clouds. Yet, every time there is a rake that we step on, it comes back to the contracts and the shouts for loyalty.
Private equity firms are the dredges of the human experience in my opinion. They prey on vulnerabilities and their sole aim is to turn everything they come in contact with into a net positive for themselves regardless of the charred remains they could potentially leave in their wake. But sadly, if you don’t want a nation-state scooping up your club, at the top level this is the brand of ownership you are dealing with. They would just as soon throw their mother into the Wicker Man if it meant that they could show a positive graph come Q3. Loyalty is not a word in their vernacular.
That is why I’m past the point of being critical of players who depart under dubious circumstances. This is the environment they’ve been bred into these days. I want transparency from both sides during a contract negotiation. Seeing something similar to baseball arbitration, despite the inherent flaws in that process, would probably give a lot of fans the data they need to know where things potentially went awry, especially if the divide was entirely down to money. Instead, we have to throw guess spaghetti at the wall and see what parts of our prognostications stick.
An Unwanted End Game
Everybody likes a happy ending. We as Liverpool fans are probably going to get one in a matter of six or seven weeks as that twentieth league crown is hoisted. Yet the road to that end game has now gotten a bit rockier. Does Arne Slot manage Trent’s minutes, especially at Anfield, to mitigate the venom that will undoubtedly be spewed at him? Do we make the title race closer than it has any right to be as this distraction forces the side into silly capitulations against mid-table opposition?
I for one think this side will persevere and get things over the line. I’m also fully aware of how anti-climatic that sounds. The 2024-25 season should be remembered fondly for how beautifully this team gelled under a new manager under hostile circumstances. Taking Jurgen Klopp singing Arne Slot’s song and slingshotting to hearing that same tune during a guard of honor is legendary. Yet given our unceremonious exits from tournaments and this untimely development surrounding one of our three contract boogeymen, a cloud may linger.
Part that fog and let that golden sky shine through. We’ll go again and that wound under that dirty bandage will heal. Up the Reds.
