Summer signing for Brighton James Milner has revealed why he turned down Gareth Southgate’s offer to play for England again after announcing his retirement from international football.
After being told by then-manager Sam Allardyce that he would be a backup squad player, the Albion utility player decided to leave the Three Lions in 2016. The veteran, who played 61 times for his country, stated at the time that he wanted to allow younger players to rise through the ranks, but new manager Southgate tried to entice him out of retirement later that year.
“Southgate called me and said, ‘I want you back, I think you’d play a big role for us, [a] leader,’ and stuff like that,” Milner explained to the High Performance Podcast.
“My feeling was that if he [Southgate] had been the next England manager six weeks before and said what he said, I would have absolutely carried on.” But, at the time, I had retired, and I believe that when you do something, you fully commit to it 100 percent, and I just thought, well, how does it look me retiring, now I’m not retiring, changing my mind on the spur of the moment.
“It just felt like the right thing that I’d done it, even though if he had been the manager (after Roy Hodgson) I’d have carried on playing.”
Milner, who was 30 at the time, has since played hundreds of times for Liverpool, winning a slew of major trophies, and he moved to the Amex on a free transfer earlier this year.
