Leon had spent a full day in a state of enraged disbelief before finally, inevitably, just bursting out laughing.
It was the most ludicrous, most ingenious, most utterly Flavio Briatore thing he had ever heard of. He was a secret weapon that had been sold with a built-in safety switch.
The news had sent shockwaves through the Liverpool dressing room, where it was met with a mixture of outrage and a grudging, almost admiring, sense of awe.
"So let me get this straight," Trent Alexander-Arnold had said, a look of pure, bewildered amusement on his face.
"We paid a world-record fee for you, and we're not allowed to use you against one of our biggest European rivals? That's... that's actually genius. I hate it, but it's genius."
But the off-season drama was over.
The clause was a problem for a hypothetical future.
The present was here, and it was loud, fast, and relentlessly real. It was the opening day of the Premier League season.
