Cast your mind back to the day Liverpool clinched the Premier League title under Arne Slot in 2025, and one image stands out: Alexis Mac Allister, sitting alone on the bench as his team-mates flood the pitch, quietly weeping.
It captured something essential about the Argentina midfielder — a man for whom winning is everything. When he scored that day at Anfield, the crowd's celebrations registered 1.74 on the Richter scale, just short of the threshold for a minor earthquake.
Mac Allister was central to that title triumph, but the 2025-26 campaign told a different story. Hampered by injuries early on, he never found the form he had shown in his first two seasons at the club, making it the weakest of his three years since joining from Brighton for £35m in 2023.
World Cup form demands attention
Questions about his future surfaced over the summer, yet his performances for Argentina at the World Cup have offered a timely reminder of what he is capable of. New Liverpool head coach Andoni Iraola will have taken notice — even if it means waiting longer before his squad is fully assembled.
The 27-year-old has featured in every minute of Argentina's campaign, bar the final group-stage fixture once qualification was secured. He played the full 120 minutes in both the last-16 tie against Cape Verde and the quarter-final against Switzerland, which both went to extra time. Only goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez of Aston Villa has logged more minutes for Argentina at the tournament.
Across those matches, Mac Allister has accumulated 539 minutes, won 31 duels, made 10 tackles and nine interceptions, and applied high pressure on 208 occasions — figures that rank him among the tournament's most industrious midfielders.
