Trent Alexander-Arnold has opened up on what was going through his mind when he assisted Divock Origi in Liverpool’s famous Champions League semi-final comeback against Barcelona.
The Reds were facing a 3-0 deficit going into the second leg of that clash last season, but staged one of the most remarkable turnarounds the competition has ever seen, capped off with a strike from the Belgian that came as a direct result of a quickly taken Alexander-Arnold corner.
And in an article for the Player’s Tribune, the England defender has spoken about the legendary moment.
He said: “People ask me all the time about that corner I took for Divock.
“They want some kind of crazy story, I guess. But the truth is that that corner was a product of our mentality, not some training-ground stuff. We bring it at training every day, every minute. Don’t know any other way.
“The only real secret about the goal we scored off that corner was that Div was the perfect person to be on the end of that ball, because he’s probably the single most laid-back person in football. He’s just chill. He’s not phased, ever.”
OPINION
This is such a modest answer from Alexander-Arnold. That corner, so simple and yet so effective, will reverberate through the fabric of Liverpool’s history as a club for a lifetime, and probably even longer than that. Without that goal, the Reds could easily have crashed out to a fearsome Barcelona side, but with it, they were able to pull off the kind of result that will no doubt have left jaws on floors and hearts in mouths all across the globe. In many ways, you couldn’t have asked for a more fitting duo than Alexander-Arnold and Origi to pull it out of the bag. One, a local lad who grew up just a stone’s throw from Melwood, the other written off by so many and widely regarded as a flop prior to his heroics in Europe. They represent so much that is great about Liverpool – the passion, the dedication, the refusal to give in – and while Alexander-Arnold might remember that corner as a fleeting moment, everyone who has seen it since will remember it forever.
