Trent Alexander-Arnold was born with a gift and Liverpool didn’t stop him. Academy director, Alex Inglethorpe, says ‘they didn’t teach him to pass’ and ‘if you want to be a player that makes the difference, you’ve got to have an awful lot of failure.’

Liverpool Academy director, Alex Inglethorpe:

I think Trent’s a good example — we didn’t teach him. So, he’s good at passing, right? We all know he’s good at passing - we didn’t teach him that. No. But we didn’t tell him to stop it either.

We wouldn’t say, “Pass five yards here, pass five yards there. “Only play in your triangle on the side, only do this,” you know. He had freedom and I think he taught himself in the end because the hardest thing to do is, especially if you want to be a player that affects the game.

If you want to be a player that makes the difference, you’ve got to have an awful lot of failure. Yeah?

How many shots would you have had before? Know what I mean, as a kid? How many dribbles would you have taken on, how many chances would you have missed, to become good at what you’re doing? Or you can play safe and just like, ok, “pass to you there, pass to you there.” No risk but little reward.

I don’t think players are afraid to take risks, I think they are trained to find the simplest solution. It is ingrained in them. But players that are forced to find their own solution are the difference makers that stand out because everyone else is playing safe. They stick out.

Several generations of creatives never reached their potential because they were told to fall in line. The next Dimitar Berbatov is stuck helping circulate the ball in the lower leagues because that type is not usually one of the top athletes.