I never went to house parties. I made sacrifices and it was worth it but I'm one of the very few - TRENT ALEXANDER-ARNOLD

FOR Trent Alexander-Arnold the sacrifice was worth it. He gave up most of his childhood to become one of the very few who make it to football's elite level.

- DARREN LEWIS

There were no house parties, no hanging out with friends, no walking home from school, even.

Now aged 25 with Premier League, Champions League and FA Cup winners' medals stored away at home the Liverpool and England full-back is reaching out to those that didn't make it with his After Academy.

Over 99% of those signed to a Premier League academy at the age of nine will never have a professional career.

After using social media to gauge the scale of the problem, Trent was inundated by stories from kids and their families, detailing everything from a loss of identity and mental health struggles suicidal thoughts.

His After Academy is his own contribution to finding a solution. It will focus on helping teenagers to find internships and work.

"I'm fortunate because I look back and think every single sacrifice I made was worth it," he says.

"I'm one of very, very, very, very few players with the privilege to say that.

But everybody else that I played with, around 15 or 16 other kids, probably couldn't. How can that be fair? "People here, for example, know that someone trains and plays for Liverpool [when you're a kid]. It becomes who you are and it defines you. I remember walking down the street with people saying: 'You're [at] Liverpool academy, you're this, that.

"I was fine with it. When you are known as that and you were that, you're proud of it.

"But when that gets stripped away from you, you don't know who you are. Because you've given everything and sacrificed everything for it.

"It's almost like an identity crisis." There were 16 boys in Trent's academy age group.

On a typical day, a van would pick them up at 7am, returning just after 8pm for homework, dinner and sleep.

He would go to bed exhausted and it would be his life for four years.