The worst kept secret surrounding Liverpool Football Club is out after Trent Alexander-Arnold announced that he will in fact, as everyone has suspected since at least the start of 2025, be joining Real Madrid on a free transfer at the end of the season.

“After 20 years at Liverpool Football Club, I’ll be leaving at the end of the season,” the soon to be ex-Red began in a short video meant to explain his decision to fans. “The decision for me is personal—to change my environment, to challenge myself elsewhere.

“It’s not about wanting to find something better, it’s about me and my personal journey as a player, and now I feel is the right time to go and experience that. People won’t be happy with the decision, but it’s something that I feel like I need to do on my journey and my career.

“The times I’ve had here, the memories, the special moments are and will always will be some of the best moments I’ll have in my life and memories that will live with me forever, and I’m eternally grateful to everyone who’s helped me along the way.”

Perhaps there is no good or right way to depart your childhood club, especially when you’d previously said captaining it was one of your dreams—which likely would have happened had Alexander-Arnold stayed—and talked about how winning there “means more.”

Perhaps there is no good way to depart your childhood club as a 26-year-old star when it looks, in retrospect, as if you always wanted the option of leaving on a free at the peak of your earning power, signing a four-year deal in 2021—the same summer Alisson Becker signed a six-year deal.

It’s a decision, though—not just to depart but to depart on a free and to Real Madrid of all places, the side that has most thwarted Liverpool dreams in Europe over Alexander-Arnold’s time at the club—that will inevitably colour the player’s legacy with the Reds.

Trent Alexander-Arnold became a star for his boyhood club, won everything he could have, and now wants a new challenge. Set out that way it’s hard to quibble. Sport is emotional, though, and it’s likely most fans and supporters will feel cooler toward him today than yesterday.

And it’s likely that coolness of feeling, of emotion, will persist. His contributions will be remembered fondly, but people will focus on the players who stayed—both now and in past seasons—when perhaps they could have left for a payday or new challenge.

Trent Alexander-Arnold may have started younger, and he may have done as much or more than anyone. Still, any Liverpool fan can come up today with a laundry list of teammates of his who reached a key moment in their career, a potential turning point, and chose to stay.

“Being able to sit here now as a two-time Premier League champion for the club I grew up loving,” the 26-year-old soon to be former Liverpool right back added. “It’s a great end to the story for me.”