Gianluigi Donnarumma will become the first player in Premier League history to wear the No. 99 shirt after choosing the number he has long identified with for Manchester City.<\/p>\n
Donnarumma is filling the void left by \u00c9derson\u2019s switch to Fenerbah\u00e7e but has not opted to take up the No. 31 he vacated. James Trafford started the season as Pep Guardiola\u2019s first-choice goalkeeper and wears the No. 1 shirt, which Donnarumma might have been expected to take. Instead he has selected a figure that has followed him since his breakthrough.<\/p>\n
Players in England\u2019s top flight are permitted to wear any number between 1 and 99, yet until now no one had chosen 99. The highest squad numbers in recent seasons included Conor Bradley wearing 84 last season and Donnarumma\u2019s new Manchester City teammate Rico Lewis wearing 82. Donnarumma\u2019s choice sets a new benchmark for Premier League shirt numbers.<\/p>\n
The number has a personal history. When a 16-year-old Donnarumma made his senior debut for Milan he became the second-youngest goalkeeper ever to appear in Italian football, 73 years to the day after the holder of that record, Giuseppe Sacchi. The prodigious teenager achieved that feat with 99 on his back, a number that underscored his youth because it represented the year he was born: 1999.<\/p>\n
Age and size marked much of Donnarumma\u2019s early development. At youth team games his mother would have him carry his ID card to hand to accusing parents who questioned his age. By the age of 10, he was already 6’0″.<\/p>\n
At Manchester City the selection of No. 99 is both a nod to that past and a novelty in the Premier League register. It closes the shirt-number gap left by \u00c9derson\u2019s departure while keeping Donnarumma\u2019s long-standing connection to the digits he first wore as a teenager.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gianluigi Donnarumma will be the first player to wear the No. 99 shirt in Premier League history. 99.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2434,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[238,172],"tags":[286,180],"class_list":["post-2435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-city","category-epl","tag-gianluigi-donnarumma","tag-player-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2435","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=2435"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2436,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2435\/revisions\/2436"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}