The former Liverpool player’s inclusion in midfield was largely circumstantial, with suspensions for Eduardo Camavinga, Arda Guler and Bernardo Silva leaving Mourinho short on options.<\/p>\n
Alexander-Arnold lined up alongside Federico Valverde but had a mixed evening, creating two chances and attempting more crosses than any other Real player – but failing to win a tackle. His passing accuracy was also down at 83.3%.<\/p>\n
He was substituted shortly after Inter pulled one back on 77 minutes, prompting whistles around the stadium – although this could well have been frustration Madrid supporters felt at their team’s performance rather than at Alexander-Arnold individually.<\/p>\n
It was the first competitive match in which Alexander-Arnold and fellow right-back Denzel Dumfries had started together. He started both for a pre-season friendly against Fiorentina, with Alexander-Arnold operating at right-back while Dumfries played further forward on the same side.<\/p>\n
It is clear Mourinho still doesn’t have a definite starting right-back, so in the same way Alexander-Arnold had to fight to start with Dani Carvajal last season, he is doing the same this season with Dumfries.<\/p>\n
But BBC Sport understands the Portuguese has been impressed by the England international’s performances, values and the versatility he brings to the squad.<\/p>\n
Indeed, Mourinho views Alexander-Arnold as different from many traditional full-backs because of his ability to move into central areas and contribute to attacks from midfield positions.<\/p>\n
His passing, crossing, through balls and set-piece delivery remain among the strongest parts of his game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The former Liverpool player’s inclusion in midfield was largely circumstantial, with suspensions for Eduardo Camavinga, Arda Guler and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":764553,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-764552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=764552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/764553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=764552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=764552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=764552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}