Trent Alexander-Arnold is reported to have rejected a new contract offer from Liverpool, which included a “significant” salary increase, indicating that financial gains were not his reason for deciding to leave Anfield this summer.

Following months of rumors and increasing anticipation of his move, Alexander-Arnold’s departure from Liverpool has now been confirmed. The next anticipated development in this ongoing story is likely his move to Real Madrid as a free agent at the beginning of July.

Liverpool had naturally hoped to retain Alexander-Arnold, who established himself as one of the premier full-backs in global football over the nine years he has been with the first team.

But while they were successful with lucrative contract offers to Mohamed Salah and Virgil van Dijk, who are at a very different stage of their career to Alexander-Arnold, the 26-year-old wanted something else.

EPSN writes that the contract on offer from Liverpool would have made Alexander-Arnold, rumoured to currently be earning £180,000 per week, one of the best paid full-backs in the world.

But multiple reports have explained how Alexander-Arnold requested a face-to-face meeting with Arne Slot during the March international break to respectfully inform the Liverpool boss of his decision to leave the club at the end of his current deal.

The Telegraph notes that other events at Liverpool left Alexander-Arnold feeling as though “his situation was being parked”. In the summer of 2023, two years on from his most recent new deal and when talks were expected, it is suggested he would have signed an extension.

But with Jurgen Klopp considering his own future and Liverpool burning through sporting directors, the issue was allowed to drift. The player supposedly grew “increasingly twitchy” and everything remained unclear as Klopp announced his decision to leave long before a successor was lined up. By the time sporting director Richard Hughes arrived last summer, Alexander-Arnold was already aware of other options and wanted to “give serious thought” to Madrid’s interest.

The opportunity of a huge new challenge, which Alexander-Arnold has publicly outlined himself as the primary reason for leaving Liverpool, was enough to convince him to go.

At the point, as The Athletic explains, financial incentives were not the “motivating factor” and “another £5m a year would have changed nothing” in terms of convincing him to stay.

Alexander-Arnold is ultimately set to get a pay rise when he makes the switch to Real Madrid in July, around an estimated £3.2m (€4m) more each season, but it won’t challenge the Spanish club’s top earners; Kylian Mbappe, Vinicius Junior and close friend Jude Bellingham. And if the promise of more money didn’t keep him at Liverpool, it wasn’t what drove him to choose Madrid either, because he could have stayed put in comfortable surroundings to achieve a similar financial outcome.