Trent Alexander-Arnold is reaching out to those that didn’t make it with his After Academy
Liverpool’s Trent Alexander-Arnold has opened up about the sacrifices he made as a teenager to achieve his football dreams.
The England fullback says he missed out on house parties and hanging out with friends while he was growing up, but now it was all worth it. The Liverpool star is now reaching out to those who didn’t make it in football with his After Academy.
The academy aims to help teenagers find internships and work. “I’m fortunate because I look back and think every single sacrifice I made was worth it,” Alexander-Arnold said. “I’m one of very, very, very, very few players with the privilege to say that. But everybody else that I played with, around 15/16 other kids, probably couldn’t. How can that be fair?
“People here, for example, know that someone trains and plays for Liverpool [when you’re a kid]. It becomes who you are and it defines you. I remember walking down the street with people saying: ‘You’re [at] Liverpool Academy, you’re this, that.’
“I was fine with it. When you are known as that and you were that, you’re proud of it. But when that gets stripped away from you, you don’t know who you are. Because you’ve given everything and sacrificed everything for it. It’s almost like an identity crisis.”
Growing up in West Derby, a Liverpool suburb, Alexander-Arnold was in Year 2 when his name was picked out of a hat for a half-term holiday training camp run by the club. Aged seven, he was training on Tuesdays and Thursdays after school and playing matches on Sunday. After signing his first contract with the club at eight, he was taken out of PE.
“I wasn’t allowed to play any football outside of the academy,” he says. “The risk of injury wasn’t worth it.”
Nor was he in a position to go on holidays with his family.
The Liverpool star shared: “The off-season didn’t line up with school. So when the season finished, you’re still in school. And then when school finishes, you’re back in training. I had a family holiday when I was about 11, and then not again till I was 17/18. But it didn’t bother me.”
He also mentioned that he took his GCSEs early while in Bulgaria for the Under-17 European Championships, saying: “Luckily, my parents were on at me with school work and education. So I was always very disciplined and I had to get it right.
“The school board sent out the invigilators and it all was done properly.”
About his dedication, he said: “Looking back… my brothers, everyone I knew was doing that. But everyone who wanted to be a footballer had to make sacrifices. I wasn’t the only one. I just wanted to give myself the best chance. I thought, if it’s what I really want and I believe I can go and do it, then I’m not going to cut corners, I’m not going to cheat myself out of it. I’m going to try my absolute best.
“And I would do it all a million times over just to get a sniff of what I’ve achieved.”
