So Trent Alexander-Arnold will play in the Champions League quarter-finals for the fifth time and this time it will be with Real Madrid. The former Liverpool full-back will perhaps feel that his switch from England to Spain last summer is slowly being vindicated.
There are those on Merseyside who will never agree. Once a red always a red and all that. But as Liverpool — trying to overturn a first-leg deficit against Galatasaray tonight — have laboured this season, Alexander-Arnold’s career in the Spanish capital feels as though it may be about to take flight.
It has not been easy for the 27-year-old. He has been injured and he has struggled for form. He began the season playing for one former Liverpool player, Xabi Alonso, and is now playing for another, Alvaro Arbeloa.
So, yes, it has been turbulent and it has done nothing for his hopes of playing in this summer’s World Cup in America. When Thomas Tuchel announces his England squad for the spring friendlies on Friday, it will be a surprise if Alexander-Arnold is in it.
Here, though, steps forward were taken on a dramatic night in east Manchester. Real are four points behind Barcelona at the top of La Liga and progress has now been made in their favourite competition.
Alexander-Arnold was not central to the action that really mattered here. At times he looked a little like a bemused bystander as chaos slowly unfolded around him.
Trent Alexander-Arnold’s role was largely restricted to tracking City’s Jeremy Doku
Indeed it took the City supporters a while to really register that a former Liverpool player was among them. They did not remember to boo him until he took a rare touch inside the City half a little after half an hour had been played.
Certainly his role is a little different to that he enjoyed predominantly under Jurgen Klopp at Anfield. There was nothing very hybrid about the job he did here. Stationed as right full-back in Real’s back four, his task was to look after the City left winger Jeremy Doku in traditional fashion.
On the whole he did it, sometimes with the help of supporting midfielder Federico Valverde.
It would be interesting to know what he feels about all of this. To watch Alexander-Arnold play for Klopp’s Liverpool was to look upon freedom in its purest sporting form. He once told Gary Neville on a podcast that Klopp’s Liverpool were at their most dangerous and optimistic when the opposition had the ball.
The rationale was that when they lost it, they were at the mercy of Liverpool’s counter and, with his remarkable passing range, Alexander-Arnold often knew he would be at the heart of all that.
Here for Real, he didn’t even take all the free-kicks and corners. From that point of view, he was a little like a bird in a cage.
Indeed as he walked down towards the tunnel with Pep Guardiola at the end of a dramatic and fractious first half he did so with the look of someone who perhaps knew he had been a little peripheral to most of the big moments.
In England, they used to say he wasn’t a natural defender and there was always truth in that. He isn’t, really. He doesn’t always sense danger quickly or naturally and it’s hard to teach it.
Man City boss Pep Guardiola embraces Alexander-Arnold at the Etihad on Wednesday
Towards the end of the first half, he was part of a Real defence that fell asleep at a corner and by the time those in black woke up, Doku’s cross was deflecting off Alexander-Arnold’s toe for Erling Haaland to score.
Over the course of the game, Real’s capricious nature was laid bare. With the aggregate score at 4-1 to the Spanish team in the second half – and with Real also a man to the good – they nevertheless looked and played at times as though they were hanging on a little. That was strange.
This is not a great Real team but European football is in quite a peculiar place at the moment. Is there a really top team anywhere?
In London, PSG of France were maybe laying a claim to that as they embarrassed Chelsea. But it’s a point worth debating nevertheless.
For now it’s probably enough for Alexander-Arnold that he’s in this Real team. Last time he was in England, he had an awful night as he returned to Anfield as a substitute when Liverpool outplayed and beat Real in November.
This was memorable for quite different reasons.
