Liverpool right-back Trent Alexander-Arnold turned 21-years-old on Monday and we’ve all got to ask ourselves, is that Trent or is it Benjamin Button?
From making his full debut at Old Trafford to winning the Champions League, the youngster has played more games than Steven Gerrard or Jamie Carragher at his age and looks set for more than a decade at the top.
Gary Lineker can’t get enough of Alexander-Arnold and if there’s a good judge of how good a defender is it’s a top class forward. Lineker can be called a lot of things but you can’t deny he wasn’t a world class player. He knows.
There were some concerns over the summer about his form, but they are all based on an outrageous level he set for himself at such an early stage. It’s almost like he’s aging backwards like some sort of ridiculous footballing Benjamin Button.
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Alexander-Arnold has set such high expectations of himself that anything less than a 7/10 seems to be a failure. The right-back didn’t have a great game against Salzburg or Leicester City but that’s in comparison to his previous performances and you’d count on him to bounce back the only way he knows how: with a ripping performance.
When you rank players in terms of delivery from set-pieces and in play, TAA is among the very best. His pile driver of a strike against Chelsea was past Kepa before he could see it, and that wasn’t a fluke. He’s done it before and he’ll do it again.
Alexander-Arnold is only set to get better with time and experience, and to see a local lad strutting his stuff on the pitch is the stuff fans dream of. Both Gerrard and Carragher played over 700 times for Liverpool and Trent must be eyeing those records.
Yeah, he gets exposed sometimes and teams can get in behind the starlet, but the way the Reds play that’s always likely to happen. But that’s the beauty of it: this wonderful, age-defying Benjamin Button type player is producing performances that 30-years-old would be proud of.
He might be aging backwards now, but when he starts moving forward is when opposition attacks and defenses really need to start sweating bullets.