Kyle Walker has conceded that his midseason move away from Manchester City during the 2024\u201325 campaign was driven by personal motives even as he values the experience. Faced with reduced playing time, Walker pushed for a switch and completed a six-month loan to AC Milan before the summer brought a permanent transfer to Burnley.<\/p>\n
Speaking to Sky Sports, Walker said he should have weighed his role at City more carefully when the club was struggling. He reflected: \u201cShould I have left and gone on loan to AC Milan? I was the club captain, and you\u2019re the first one in line when things are not going really well,\u201d he reflected. \u201cAt that time in the season, should I have left? Looking back at it now, probably no.<\/p>\n
\u201cI should have stood by or next to my teammates, next to my friends and people who I class as my family. But for the first time probably in my career I was selfish and I thought about myself and I wanted to play football.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t see it as a bad reason but I wasn\u2019t happy sitting on the bench and getting a game here, there and whenever. I felt that I still had a point to prove that I could still play at a high level. When a club like AC Milan comes, I didn\u2019t think I could turn them down.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I came back in the summer I had time to reflect on it. But then I don\u2019t regret it as I always wanted to play abroad and experience that. I\u2019m glad I did the six months, but I probably could have done a bit better.\u201d<\/p>\n
Walker initially drew attention in Milan, but injuries and a dip in form saw him lose his place. AC Milan declined their option to make the loan permanent, an option worth around \u20ac5 million ($6.7 million). Burnley then paid a similar fee to secure Walker\u2019s services at Turf Moor this summer.<\/p>\n
Since arriving at Burnley he has featured prominently, playing every minute of the team\u2019s first seven games of the Premier League 2025\/26 season. Those appearances include a 5\u20131 defeat by his former employers late last month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Walker says leaving Manchester City for AC Milan in January was ‘selfish’ yet he does not regret it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3714,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[795,1056,969],"tags":[1081,1006],"class_list":["post-3715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-burnley","category-man-city","category-premier-league","tag-adaptation","tag-captaincy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3715","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=3715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}