James Milner has announced his retirement from professional soccer, drawing a close to a Premier League career that rewrote the competition\u2019s record books. Milner finished with 658 top-flight appearances, having surpassed Gareth Barry earlier this year, and leaves the game as the Premier League\u2019s all-time appearance maker.<\/p>\n
After overtaking the long-standing mark in February he indicated there might be scope for more: \u201cHopefully I\u2019ve proved the last few games that I can still contribute on the pitch. I\u2019m delighted to be part of it and the dressing room, it\u2019s full of incredible characters and very good players, and a good up and coming manager,\u201d he beamed. \u201cI\u2019ll keep pushing, let\u2019s see where that takes us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brighton\u2019s manager Fabian H\u00fcrzeler, who was in fourth grade when Milner first appeared in 2002, had wanted the veteran to continue. \u201cHe transports my messages, he transports my values in the group, and … takes responsibility in the right moments,\u201d the German coach gushed.<\/p>\n
The scale of Milner\u2019s longevity is striking. He made his debut for Leeds United as a 16-year-old in the 2002 season; 158 of the players who appeared in the most recent Premier League season had not been born then. Across 13,166 Premier League matches contested in history, Milner featured in 5% of them.<\/p>\n
Statistically he departs with 56 Premier League goals and 90 assists, the latter the 10th-most in competition history. Despite his appearance record he ranks 12th for total minutes played since 1992; even if he played every minute of Brighton\u2019s next 150 matches he would not overtake Barry\u2019s 54,438 minutes.<\/p>\n
His career stretched across six clubs and 24 seasons in the top flight, a span measured against eight U.K. prime ministers from Tony Blair to Keir Starmer. Milner\u2019s versatility is underlined by the positional breakdown kept by Transfermarkt and reiterated by former colleagues. \u201cHe can play any position,\u201d J\u00fcrgen Klopp raved during their shared time together with Liverpool. \u201cWhen he goes into left back or right back or whatever he shows how good a player he is and how good a professional he is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Historic context of the early 2000s era, transfer fees and managerial culture are also part of Milner\u2019s story, as are anecdotes from that period, including Sir Alex Ferguson\u2019s famous press rebuke: \u201cI\u2019m not f—ing talking to you,\u201d United\u2019s boss seethed when facing the press. \u201cHe\u2019s a f—ing great player. Youse are all f—ing idiots.\u201d Data via Transfermarkt .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
James Milner retires after record 658 Premier League appearances, leaving an era of longevity. Ending<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14149,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[773,969],"tags":[1162,1484,1637],"class_list":["post-14150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brighton-hove-albion","category-premier-league","tag-analytics","tag-appearance-record","tag-assists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}