Trent Alexander-Arnold has said his appetite for silverware has only increased after becoming the youngest player to win all six major trophies available to an English club.
Liverpool’s FA Cup victory on Saturday ensured that, at the age of 23 years and 219 days, Alexander-Arnold has won the Champions League, Premier League, FA Cup, League Cup, Club World Cup and Uefa Super Cup.
Alexander-Arnold is the sixth player to complete that sextuple after Ryan Giggs, Denis Irwin, James Milner, César Azpilicueta and Andreas Christensen. Only Cristiano Ronaldo, when aged 23 years and 109 days, won the Champions League, Premier League, FA Cup and League Cup at a younger age than Liverpool’s gifted right-back.
“It feels special,” said Alexander-Arnold, who made his first-team debut less than six years ago. “Growing up you never think you will win all these trophies. You see legendary players who do that and you think it is unbelievable. To be able to say I have done that at such a young age is a dream come true and it is motivation to go on and carry on winning more trophies.
“Hopefully there is a lot more to come. The motivation is to win them all again and keep winning and keep adding to the trophy cabinet.
“Days like Saturday help me. I think it comes from within and thinking about what I want my legacy to be and where I think my potential is as a player. The sky is the limit really, so I want to push on and never be satisfied. I will keep my head down, try and win more trophies and hopefully at the end of my career I can be proud of what I have done.”
The FA Cup triumph against Chelsea also completed the set for Jürgen Klopp, who became the first manager in Liverpool’s rich history to win the European Cup, league title, FA Cup and League Cup. Liverpool could yet add the Premier League and Champions League to this season’s trophy haul and Alexander-Arnold credited a fellow member of the sextuple club, Milner, with maintaining high standards inside the dressing room.
“He is someone who keeps us all on our toes, he is massive in that dressing room,” Alexander-Arnold said of the 36-year-old, who is out of contract this summer but has been offered a one-year extension by Liverpool. “He is one of the biggest characters I have been around and it is credit to him.
“It is no surprise he has carried on winning everywhere he goes because he is relentless in what he does. He instils that mentality in us and he embodies that. Five years ago if anyone had told me I would achieve what I have achieved I don’t know what I would have said. It is very special and, hopefully, in five more years I am in an even better place than I am now. It has not gone too bad so far. Five or 10 years’ time and we will hopefully be talking about bigger and better things.”
Liverpool have won three consecutive finals against Chelsea on penalty shootouts and with a different goalkeeper in each one – Alisson in the FA Cup, Caoimhin Kelleher in the Carabao Cup and Adrián in the 2019 Super Cup. “Three different goalkeepers, three times winners. I said that in the changing room,” the goalkeeping coach, John Achterberg, said. “That is what you want. You need a little bit of luck as well as hard work. It makes all our day.”
Achterberg described Alisson’s performance at Wembley as “outstanding, awesome”. Klopp dedicated the trophy to neuro11, the company which has worked with Liverpool for the past year on penalty technique, but the goalkeeping coach insists ultimate responsibility for the team’s spot-kick success remains with the players.
“We work on things but in the end Ali makes the final decision,” Achterberg said. “We discuss everything. They have all been practising a lot on penalties this season. Obviously the guys from Germany came to work with them specifically, but more and more players have been practising after training and getting confidence. It is a big credit to them all because it is big pressure to take one. You win as a team. We analyse all these things and there is a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes.”
Source: The Guardian