Latest news with #TrentAlexander-Arnold
Daily Mirror
19 hours ago
- Business
- Daily Mirror
Transfer Updates- Liverpool close in on Wirtz, Man Utd eye Fernandes replacement
The transfer window is now open and it looks set to be one of the busiest ever for Premier League clubs. Manchester United are expected to be very busy as they look to overhaul their squad this summer after a woeful campaign. The likes of Alejandro Garnacho, Marcus Rashford and Antony are all expected to be sold, while club captain Bruno Fernandes could also be on the move. Al-Hilal are hoping to bring him to Saudi Arabia, having offered Fernandes a £100m deal over three years - with another £100m transfer fee for United. Reigning champions Liverpool have already made some moves, with Trent Alexander-Arnold's move to Real Madrid confirmed on Friday with Madrid forking out around £8.4m to sign him a month early so he can play in the Club World Cup. The signing of his replacement Jeremie Frimpong was also confirmed on Friday, with Liverpool spending £29.5m on the Bayer Leverkusen star. Another Leverkusen player is also expected to make the move to Anfield, with Liverpool closing in on a deal to sign Florian Wirtz. Elsewhere, Manchester City are continuing their search for Kevin De Bruyne's replacement as Arsenal look to sign a new striker. With all that in mind, make sure you stay tuned throughout the day as Mirror Football brings you all of the latest news and rumours... The 2025 summer transfer window is open and it is set to get off to a flier with most of the Premier League 's big guns expected to complete deals in the opening days. That is predominantly on account of the controversial new Club World Cup that sees Chelsea and Manchester City head to the United States next week for a financially-lucrative month of action that many players are unhappy to be a part of. But its consequences are extending into this summer's recruitment as some clubs race to make signings so their new faces can compete. That includes Trent Alexander-Arnold signing for Real Madrid for £10m - despite being available for free at the end of the month. Equally several sides not competing in the CWC are getting active with Manchester United set to bring in Matheus Cunha from Wolves for £62.5m and Liverpool wrapping up a deal for Jeremie Frimpong, with Florian Wirtz potentially following right behind on the path from Leverkusen. Good morning everyone and welcome to Mirror Football's live transfer blog today. Stay tuned for all of the latest transfer news and rumours...
Daily Mirror
a day ago
- Sport
- Daily Mirror
Liverpool sent 'bullying' message after transfer - 'I wouldn't have taken it'
Liverpool agreed terms on a deal worth £10million to allow Trent Alexander-Arnold to join Real Madrid early - but one pundit believes the Reds should have played hardball Liverpool have been told they should have stuck to their guns rather than caving into the 'bullies' at Real Madrid after accepting an offer from the Spanish giants for Trent Alexander-Arnold earlier this week. The Reds right-back, 26, announced at the start of the month he would not be renewing his contract at Anfield. Real Madrid are long-term admirers of the England star were due to sign him for free at the end of next month. But with Los Blancos desperate to have their marquee summer signing available for the upcoming Fifa Club World Cup, Real and Liverpool agreed terms on a financial package which - taking into account saved wages - will bank the Reds around £10million. While Liverpool will now add a sizeable sum to their summer transfer budget for a player who was due to leave for free, Gabby Agbonlahor has criticised the Premier League champions over the deal. The former Aston Villa man says he would have refused to do a deal over Alexander-Arnold and forced the England star to miss the start of the Club World Cup. He said: "Do you know what I would have done? I would have loved it - and I'm sure Liverpool fans would agree - (had they said) stuff you, you've gone after our player sneakily, you've made a deal for him to say he's going to Real Madrid, you've cost us £100m, he's a £100m player at a great age, you can wait until July 1 and he's going to miss two games of the Club World Cup, how about that? "You think you can bully everyone, Real Madrid, biggest club in the world, but you're not bullying Liverpool." The talkSPORT pundit continued: "Yes, £10m [is] great money, it can go towards transfers. But sometimes I look at it and think wouldn't it be nice if Liverpool said, 'Nah, he's not going to play a game for you until July 1'. "You you think you can get anything you want, Real Madrid. You've got (Kylian) Mbappe on a free transfer, you've got Trent on a free, and now you want him you're offering £10m for a £100m player." Alexander-Arnold will now be free to feature for Los Blancos when they face Al-Hilal in their first match of the tournament next month. The boyhood Reds fan has signed a six-year deal with the Spanish giants and will officially become a Real Madrid player when the transfer window opens on June 1.
Irish Examiner
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
£10m for a month of Alexander-Arnold exposes absurdity of Club World Cup
Hmm. Ten million pounds. What does that work out to in booing, and boo-deletion? What's the exchange rate here? How much un-booing does £10m (€12m) get you, in a highly emotive run‑your‑contract-down local‑lad‑departure scenario? This and many more equally strange questions will presumably have to be debated now Real Madrid have agreed a small but significant early release payment for Trent Alexander-Arnold, which will in turn allow his participation at the most heinous footballing entity yet devised, the new Fifa Club World Cup. The whole thing seems less important now. The Trent-Exit saga was something to talk about because the league was done. Time moves on, often in deeply strange ways. For what it's worth, I for one had no issue at all with some Liverpool fans barracking when they realised their favourite player was going to leave for free at the end of his contract. That is, I could see it was illogical and irrational. The answer to which is, duh. Meet: football. This is how the game survives, why absurd amounts of money swill across its decks every day, why the good stuff about connection and collectivism and moments of beauty can also happen. If we all just sat around taking the rational view and refusing to Become Emotional the whole thing would last about three minutes before everyone cleared their throats, looked at their watches and walked off to do some more sensible activity, like picking up litter or preserving hedgehogs. For now Madrid in the mini-window feels like a good thing for everyone. Good for Trent, who is 26, who had those luminous, oddly distant years under Jürgen Klopp, the most creatively brilliant piece of elite tactical freedom in recent times, the invention of a highly new effective role, the flank-libero, the walk‑cross man, the assist-mooch king. Liverpool aren't really a Trent team in the more orderly champion era. Whereas Real Madrid remain an oddly formless entity, a divvying up of roles, super‑strengths, star-freedoms. Madrid want him to play full-back but also to act as a rewilding element, a recreation of the Kroos-era passing range, which already sounds like a recipe for a dreamy kind of chaos. Trent Alexander-Arnold was booed by some Liverpool fans after he announced he was leaving the club this summer. File picture: Peter Byrne/PA So it's good for the neutral too, good for the basic sounds and colours, the mouthwatering story arc of Trent inside that deeply vicious media‑superstar complex. This is a footballer who will always be an object of confusion, whose passing is brilliant, sui generis and thrillingly odd in its angles, but who continues to wander about the pitch like a man trying very hard not to spill his Pot Noodle. Mainly, though, this is all very good for the Club World Cup, which is of course the real story here. And at bottom this is a Fifa story, the first significant act of the CWC 2.0, a first hum of the destructor ray for this strange new source of gravity. Most immediately, it brings us one step closer to the prospect next month of a mouthwateringly inane Madrid-al-Hilal Trent-Ronaldo celebrity face-off, the descent on the Hard Rock Stadium of a vast ant colony of weeping superfans, lookalikes, holy relic seekers and confused adolescents who really do appear to spend their days poring over the weirdly robotic CR7 Instagram feed as though communing with some plasticised ideal of show, gloss, nature-less acquisitiveness. So, there's that. Otherwise, being good for the CWC is an issue for anyone who loves the game in its existing form. Because this competition is not just a sporting abomination, a skewer of leagues, a force for stratification with its vast and destabilising income stream for the top clubs, but a kind of top-down heist. Above all, the first significant piece of mini-window business is a wonderful moment for Gianni Infantino, because this really is Infantino's baby, gestated, midwifed into being and now clasped, damp and slithering, to the Fifa president's chest through the Trump-centred brand building of the last few months. There is no secret about any of this. The Club World Cup does not need to exist. It is in effect a one-man reordering of the global calendar, a product of Fifa's unique style of government whereby a single random Swiss man is given an autocratic degree of power over the global game. Infantino even looks at times as if he can't quite believe how this thing has happened to him, staring out at the world with those flat, startled eyes, as though there is actually another man inside this man, encased in some compacted substance, a blend of processed ham, varnish and mendacity, mummified into a man-shape, squeezed into a blue suit and given the keys to the world. And now we have this, a competition that exists solely because Infantino wants access to the funds currently being harvested by club football. It fails on a basic level of sporting robustness. This is an invite-only star fest, a financial grenade chucked into every league in the world, and something Fifa has no real mandate for. Here we have the game's keepers acting with entrepreneurial self-interest, creating not just a competing format, but a competing way of perceiving the sport, a setup that invites only the biggest clubs, and marketing a vision of the game as a kind of star‑driven celebrity circus, sold through the social media feeds of its star players. Why would the clubs go along with this? The obvious reason is that interestingly sourced $1bn prize fund, the first chunk of which is now on its way to Liverpool. But it isn't just greed. There is a more subtle energy in play here, a coincidence of Infantino's ambition and the dynamic of football's new breed of owners. Gianni Infantino has done a lot of Trump-centred brand building in the last few months. File picture: Alex Brandon/AP Todd Boehly gave a significant speech at the recent Financial Times Football Leaders conference. Despite giving the appearance of having been sedated shortly before taking the stage, Boehly kept turning to two key themes. First, the urge to create out of football's global cut-through some kind of future streaming platform, a tech behemoth, which is where the real Zuckerberg money is, not mucking about with Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall's sell-on value. And second, his bafflement with football's existing culture, its fan-based conservatism. Football wants to grow, to dig its teeth into the wider global market. This is the real key to the Club World Cup, and it speaks again to Trent, to extreme, irrational loyalty, to geographical ties, to all those elements that lasso this thing into its existing shape. The Club World Cup is the first competition where it makes little difference if you boycott it or simply don't watch. It's not about getting you to like it. It's about power and ownership, driven by broadcasting money that exists outside normal market rules, that is basically a bribe to the clubs. It is instead about the dissolution of those old bonds, of the ties to physical place, about players as mobile marketing tools, teams not as mobile brands. It wants you to like it enough to subscribe and click, but not to feel any sense of obstructive ownership. This is also why the booing matters. Booing at least makes sense, speaks to those old sustaining structures, the link to place, colours, family, something that is the opposite of pop-up moves and individualism as a Fifa sales technique. It will be impossible to ignore this thing, to no-platform it, because it's already here, already eating away at the ground beneath football's feet. And who knows, in time Trent to Real Madrid in the mini-window might come to look like a first step, an Archduke Franz Ferdinand moment, the day the world shifted just a little on its axis. - The Guardian Read More John Heitinga leaves Liverpool to become new Ajax head coach
Daily Tribune
2 days ago
- Sport
- Daily Tribune
Real Madrid sign AlexanderArnold from Liverpool
Real Madrid have signed defender Trent Alexander-Arnold from Liverpool on a deal until 2031, the Spanish giants said yesterday. The 26-year-old England international's contract at Anfield was drawing to an end but Madrid paid a fee to bring him in earlier so he can play in the Club World Cup. Right-back Alexander-Arnold, who has just won the Premier League title with Liverpool, came through the academy of his boyhood club and won the Champions League in 2019. He also won the Premier League in 2020 and 352 appearances for the club. The de fender joins former Liverpool midfielder Xabi Alonso a t Real Madrid, with the Span - iardap-pointed as their new coach to replace Carlo Ancelotti. Alexander-Arnold's close connections to Liverpool meant that his announcement that he was leaving the club was viewed with disgust by some supporters and he was booed in the penultimate match of the season. But after club figures including former manager Jurgen Klopp and Mohamed Salah urged fans to remember the contribution he has made to Liverpool's success over the last six years, he was roundly cheered when he lifted the Premier League trophy at Anfield last Sunday. The defender joins a Real Madrid side which failed to win a major trophy this season. Alexander-Arnold has been criticised for his defensive concentration at times but brings supreme passing vision and attacking edge down the right flank.
Daily Mirror
2 days ago
- Sport
- Daily Mirror
Real Madrid could repeat Trent Alexander-Arnold trick with Arsenal star
Real Madrid are looking to pounce if they can take advantage Arsenal's situation, as they did with Liverpool and Trent Alexander-Arnold, over the next 12 months Real Madrid could look to take advantage of another expiring contract after signing Trent Alexander-Arnold, by targeting Arsenal star Myles Lewis-Skelly. Xabi Alonso's side parted ways with £10million to sign their new right-back a month before his Liverpool deal ended in order to make use of Alexander-Arnold in time for the Club World Cup. The full-back was widely expected to head to the Bernabeu over the last 12 months however, with his contract ticking down and no sign of renewal. Having signed Kylian Mbappe on a free transfer from Paris Saint-Germain a year ago, Real Madrid are building quite the reputation for taking advantage when players find themselves in precarious situations with their contract. And Lewis-Skelly could soon be their latest target. The young star broke through into Arsenal's first team this season after making his debut against Manchester City and in an unfamiliar position of left-back has found himself deemed good enough to also start for England under Thomas Tuchel. With the 18-year-old's remarkable rise comes pressure for Arsenal to tie him down to a new contract. Having signed his first professional deal in 2023, the teenager is now set to see his contract expire in 2026. Arsenal are in negotiations to extend the player's deal but according to the Guardian, it has not been a smooth process thus far. Real Madrid could look to take advantage. The Hale End product is one of a number of stars Arsenal sporting director Andrea Berta is attempting to tie down. The likes of Ethan Nwaneri, William Saliba and Bukayo Saka are all set for new deals with the former also seeing their contract run out in a year's time. Saliba and Saka both have two years remaining on their respective contracts, though Real Madrid have been closely linked with targeting a move for the French defender. Saka meanwhile looks most concrete to come to a new agreement, and has made it clear he plans to remain at the Emirates. The England winger believes he can fulfil all of his career ambitions at the Emirates. Asked about his future earlier this year, Saka said: 'Yeah, well, for me I want to win and I want to win wearing this badge. So I think it's pretty clear the fans know how much I love them. "You saw when I came on on Tuesday, I think they love me back. So it's a good relationship and I'm really happy to be here and just focus on winning." It is little surprise that Lewis-Skelly is drawing interest following an impressive first senior season. Former Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher believes the Arsenal star should have been named Young Player of the Year. "At 18 you're a baby," Carragher said on Sky Sports. 'The thought you could win Young Player of the Year at that age. That's something that Michael Owen does or Wayne Rooney, absolute superstars. "I couldn't believe he wasn't on that list. The reason I went for him was how well he played in big games that I've watched. Against Man City, against Liverpool, in the Bernabeu [against Real].' "That [left-back] has been a massive problem position for Arsenal and he's gone in and looked like it's his and he's always been there," Ex-Manchester United defender Gary Neville added. "That's the biggest compliment you can give to a young player, they just slot in. [Bukayo] Saka's done it in the last few years. To go in that position and do what he's done." Join our new WhatsApp community and receive your daily dose of Mirror Football content. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don't like our community, you can check out any time you like. If you're curious, you can read our Privacy Notice.
