The crisis of Kyle Walker

A version of this article was first published on December 20, it has been updated after it was announced Kyle Walker has asked to leave Manchester City

This wasn’t part of the plan for Kyle Walker. He didn’t expect to be captain of the Premier League champions at the age of 34. He didn’t expect to be within touching distance of 100 caps for England. He thought the treadmill would have slowed down by now. He thought the spotlight would have become less intense.

If you had invited him to map out his career 10 years ago, or even after Manchester City signed him for £50million ($61m in today’s exchange) in the summer of 2017, he would have guessed he would be back at Sheffield United by now. That was his only real ambition growing up on the Lansdowne Estate in Sheffield, his horizons and dreams stretching little further than Bramall Lane half a mile away.

So, no, he didn’t expect to be in a situation where his professional life would still be back-page news, the source of shock when Pep Guardiola announced on Saturday evening that his captain had “asked to explore the options to play abroad at the end of his career”.

Nor did he expect his private life to be front-page news, which is a significant part of this story.

That he is in that position reflects just how successful his career has been over the past decade — and just how turbulent things have been over the past 12 months.

There are athletes who take everything in their stride, as if they have been preparing for stardom, fame and fortune from a young age and are ready to handle every aspect of it, professionally and personally. Walker has never been that type. When he was first called into the England senior squad at the age of 20, with only six Premier League appearances to his name, there was a wide-eyed innocence about him, as if he could hardly believe it was happening to him.

That same air of incredulity is familiar to those who have worked with him.

At times it has been that same endearing, kid-in-a-sweet-shop excitement about being part of a City team that has won the Champions League and four consecutive Premier League titles in recent seasons.

At more difficult times, it has been a sense of disbelief at the level of scrutiny he has faced for his performances or for the behaviour that has seen his private life plastered over the front pages of newspapers.

Lately, increasingly, it has been both. And his desire for a new start, quite possibly at AC Milan, has been driven by a desperation to get away from it all.

As a storm raged around his City team in late 2024, their aura of invincibility eroded by a run of just one win in 13 matches in all competitions, Guardiola found himself looking for the resilience and spirit that has underpinned their successes for so many years.

The loss of Rodri to a season-ending knee injury has been an enormous factor, while Guardiola has pointed to the mental and physical demands placed on leading players by an increasingly punishing fixture schedule.

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In times of crisis, managers look to senior players to drag others through. But, instead, Walker became the embodiment of a team that had lost its way. He is defined by speed and athleticism, but now he appeared to be creaking — as if a lot of things, including opposition wingers, had begun to catch up with him.

Even last season, as he led City to the Premier League title, there were periods when Walker found the going tough. He was named in the PFA’s Premier League team of the season — and more surprisingly in UEFA’s team of the European Championship finals, ahead of Dani Carvajal and Joshua Kimmich — but at times he looked like a player who was in survival mode rather than the confident, assured right-back of previous campaigns.

Whether it is vulnerability to raids down his side of the pitch (the City right) or a struggle to keep track of opposition forwards when the attacks come down the other flank, Walker has been found wanting on several occasions this season.

There was mild criticism for the part he played in goals City conceded against Brentford, Arsenal and Newcastle United in September. Then came a tough experience as a substitute in the final half-hour against Fulham, whose winger Adama Traore achieved the rare feat of showing Walker a clean pair of heels.

Former Liverpool and England defender Jamie Carragher said on Sky Sports recently that Walker “can switch off — and that has always been the negative about him”. The problem now, Carragher said, is that Walker no longer has the speed to get him out of trouble.

Sure enough, according to Opta, Walker’s top speed in the Premier League this season (35.2km/hour) is down on last season, but only fractionally. It is further down from his highest-recorded speed two seasons ago (37.3km/hour), but almost identical to his highest three seasons ago (35.3km/hour), which illustrates the difficulty of drawing conclusions from such data.

For the record, 23 Premier League players have been clocked at higher speeds this season. That will be 23 too many for someone who prides himself on his pace and has a podcast called You’ll Never Beat Kyle Walker.

Tottenham’s Micky van de Ven (37.1km/hour) leads that particular table comfortably from Walker’s City team-mate Matheus Nunes (36.7km/hour), then come Brentford’s Bryan Mbeumo and Wolves’ Carlos Forbs (both 36.6km/hour). No other player has got beyond 36 km/hour, so Walker’s top speed is still among the fastest, just behind his City team-mate Erling Haaland (35.7 m/hour).

Far more alarming than any slight drop-off in Walker’s speed are the lapses in concentration: failing to track James Maddison in that 4-0 home defeat by Tottenham, taking his eye off Cody Gakpo for the opening goal in the 2-0 defeat at Liverpool, playing Daniel Munoz onside for the first goal and failing to jump with Maxence Lacroix for the second in the 2-2 draw at Crystal Palace, and a moment’s hesitation before both Juventus goals in last week’s Champions League defeat in Turin.

On top of that, there has been poor decision-making with the ball. Walker has never been a Philipp Lahm, Trent Alexander-Arnold or Joao Cancelo in possession, but his difficulties have increased in a team that is suddenly low on cohesion and fluency.

Last season in the Premier League, he found a team-mate with 67.5 per cent of his long passes. This season it is down to 51.2 per cent, or up to 3.7 unsuccessful long passes per 90 minutes. The one he overhit deep into stoppage time in last month’s derby defeat by Manchester United, to groans from the home crowd, is a classic example.

This season’s difficulties point to two different things. First, a wider breakdown of City’s defensive system. Second, the individual struggles of a player who is caught in the grip of a crisis, both on the pitch and off it.

When Walker came close to leaving City for Bayern Munich in the summer of 2023, it was less in pursuit of a new challenge on the pitch and more in the hope of finding peace and stability off it.

“I tried to escape,” he told The Sun newspaper in January. “Did I want to leave City? No, of course I didn’t; we’re the best team in the world at the minute. But it was a chance to get away from England and the media I was going to get.”

Walker’s personal life has been turbulent for several years. He has four children with Annie Kilner, whom he married in 2022, but has also fathered two children with model and influencer Lauryn Goodman. When he spoke in early 2024 about the media coverage he “was going to get”, it was in reference to what he called “idiot choices and idiot decisions” in his private life.

Media coverage of Walker’s messy private life has been intense. On the showbiz sections of certain UK newspaper websites, the churn of stories involving Walker, Kilner and Goodman — ideally all three in the same headline for SEO purposes — seems never-ending.

Anything Kilner says on her podcast or posts on her Instagram brings another unwanted headline about “England star Kyle Walker”.

The coverage built up to a peak around the Euros last summer. One newspaper accompanied Goodman to England’s group game against Denmark along with her and Walker’s four-year-old son. Two days after England were beaten by Spain in the final, Walker was in London for a two-day hearing at the Central Family Court over payments to Goodman to support their one-year-old daughter.

The court heard that Walker had paid more than £430,000 to Goodman in maintenance and had purchased a large property in Sussex. Walker told the court he was “not an open chequebook” despite earning a multi-million-pound annual income at City. The hearing ended with Walker being ordered to pay £12,500 in child maintenance per month plus one-off fees of £5,000 for furniture and £30,000 for a car to be used by a nanny. He was described by Mr Judge Edward Hess as having acted with “dignity and generosity (…) in facing up to the financial and personal consequences of what happened”.

It has been widely reported since then that Kilner has filed for divorce proceedings and will seek half of Walker’s estimated £27million fortune.

A source close to the family, speaking on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation, told The Athletic last month that the circumstances are not entirely as portrayed. Reports over the past 24 hours, since Guardiola’s statement about the player’s future, have suggested the plan is for Walker to move to Italy with Kilner and their four children.

Walker with Kilner at Euro 2024 last summer (Richard Pelham/Getty Images)

For years, Walker’s performances seemed to be unaffected by unedifying headlines about his private life. Turbulence off the pitch rarely followed him onto it.

It has seemed like a different story this season. On French TV station Canal+ last month, former City midfielder Samir Nasri made reference to “things that happened off the pitch that are affecting his performance on the pitch”.

This growing sense of chaos on and off the pitch is the type of situation Walker was determined to avoid when he flirted with the idea of joining Bayern last year. He was serious about wanting to escape, but on that occasion, Guardiola and City made him an offer he could not refuse.

The importance of captaincy can be overstated at times. Football is nothing like cricket, where the role requires a player to be the team’s on-pitch strategist. Nor is football in 2024 anything like the football of the past, when captains were expected to be warriors and alpha-male figures: a Tony Adams, Roy Keane or John Terry.

But Walker was a surprising choice at the start of last season to take over the City captaincy after Ilkay Gundogan left for Barcelona (before returning this summer). Many within the club thought either vice-captain Kevin De Bruyne or defender Ruben Dias, who had been on the team’s leadership group for the previous two seasons, would be next in line.

De Bruyne started last season as captain away to Burnley. It was only after the Belgium midfielder was injured, ruling him out for five months, that Walker emerged as the team’s new leader.

That coincided with Walker’s negotiations over a new contract following a heart-to-heart with Guardiola. Over dinner at a Japanese restaurant in Manchester, the manager pleaded with him to stay. A few weeks later, he signed what was effectively a three-year deal, taking him until the summer of 2026 — an unusually long commitment to a player who had already turned 33.

At that time, the club’s director of football, Txiki Begiristain, described him as “the best right-back in the world”. He was named in the FIFPro World XI for 2023, voted for by professional players worldwide. After years of being maligned and underestimated — though never by his managers or his fellow professionals — the accolades were coming in abundance.

Walker and City on their social media feeds, mocked up a video based on that scene in The Wolf of Wall Street where Leonardo Di Caprio’s character, Jordan Belfort, changes course midway through his farewell speech to declare, “I’M NOT LEAVING!”

I’m not leaving! 💪 pic.twitter.com/kVwGkOz7i9

— Manchester City (@ManCity) September 14, 2023

But there was also a nagging feeling that his powers might be on the wane — and that, if Walker was fearful of the media scrutiny that was on its way, elevating him to the captaincy might bring both unwanted publicity for the club and additional pressure on the player.

Last month’s derby defeat by Manchester United brought another wave of adverse publicity for Walker, widely condemned for throwing himself to the ground in what looked like an attempt to get Rasmus Hojlund sent off.

Walker after falling to the ground during the derby (Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images)

In the Sky Sports studio at half-time, former United captain Keane said, “I don’t know the guy (Walker) and I’m embarrassed for him.”

Former City defender Micah Richards suggested Walker was “better than that”.

“Is he?” replied Keane. “I’m not so sure.”

Walker told reporters during the Euros last summer that the only feedback he listens to is from his mother. The rest, he said, washes over him.

It wasn’t entirely convincing. At other times, he has spoken about being annoyed by what he has heard while listening to radio phone-ins on the way to training. Alternatively, he has said he thrives on criticism. “Keep hammering me and I will just keep coming back,” he said during the Club World Cup tournament in Saudi Arabia in December 2023.

Walker has continually proved his doubters and detractors wrong. He has shown a rare determination and drive to reach — and stay at — such a rarefied level.

But he has never seemed the type who finds it easy to detach himself from the noise that surrounds the game.

Criticism is one thing. Racial abuse is quite another.

Last month, Walker used his social media channels to highlight “vile, racist and threatening” abuse he had received online after City’s 2-0 Champions League defeat by Juventus. He included a screenshot of one of the messages, telling him, “Bro you can f*** around and die stupid a** n****.”

He has highlighted abuse in the past. After City’s Carabao Cup triumph over Chelsea in April 2021, he shared screenshots on his Instagram, asking “When is this going to stop?” It still hasn’t.

Lately, it has felt like open season on Walker. A friend and former team-mate, asked by The Athletic to put the player’s struggles into context, uses that very phrase. He has no wish to add to what he calls “a pile-on” by discussing the matter publicly. “It’s unbelievable the disrespect ‘Walks’ gets,” he says. “Look at what he’s won.”

Without question, Walker has been one of the finest full-backs of the Premier League era. He has had to maintain an extremely high standard not just to keep his place at City but to win 93 caps for England, particularly in recent years when facing competition with Alexander-Arnold, Kieran Trippier and Reece James.

He gave very serious consideration to retiring from international football after Euro 2024. Part of what has kept him going is an ambition to win 100 caps, becoming only the 11th man to reach that milestone for England. For now, he is determined to prove himself to new manager Thomas Tuchel.

Encouragingly for Walker, it was Tuchel who wanted to sign him for Bayern last year. But that was then and this is now.

Walker after winning the Champions League in 2023 (Michael Steele/Getty Images)

What happens next will be fascinating as far as Walker’s international career is concerned. If his future lies in Milan or at another big European club, he might reasonably hope that a return to form will put him firmly in Tuchel’s thoughts, keeping alive the prospect of winning 100 caps, with the 2026 World Cup looming in the middle distance.

Age is no barrier if a player has the athleticism and the dedication to keep performing at that level but it is Walker’s focus that has been under fiercest scrutiny of late. It is quite striking that Guardiola, having initially been so reluctant to field a team without him during that bleak run before Christmas, ended up taking his struggling captain out of the spotlight.

After that Manchester derby defeat on December 15, Walker was dropped for the 2-1 defeat at Aston Villa, when he came on as a substitute for the injured John Stones. He was then absent from the squad for the 1-1 draw with Everton, which Guardiola said was due to illness.

Walker has not returned to the starting line-up, with Rico Lewis preferred at right-back for the Premier League victories over Leicester and West Ham. Although he came on as a substitute in both of those matches, he did not take the captain’s armband from De Bruyne on either occasion.

Then came the FA Cup tie against Salford, an 8-0 victory, and Guardiola’s post-match revelation that Walker had gone to City’s director of football two days earlier and asked if he could “explore the options” of a move overseas.

Guardiola praised Walker’s “amazing” contribution to City’s recent history, saying it would have been “impossible” to have been so successful without him. But unlike at the start of last season, there is a clear willingness to let him go.

It looks like an outcome that suits City, which explains Guardiola’s willingness to discuss the matter publicly — something he has not always done in the past when players have expressed a desire to leave. It looks convenient. Better this than to allow the awkward situation where the club captain — a club legend, without question — can be badly out of sorts and badly out of favour.

Even with so many others struggling, it was Walker who became the on-pitch face of City’s early-season crisis.

That look — eyes wide open in anguished disbelief — became familiar of late. Everything that was happening to him and to City looked so hard to comprehend and even harder to explain.

It is the problem faced by someone who, having had to do his growing up in public, now found himself in danger of growing old under the same harsh, unforgiving spotlight. It is no great surprise that, for personal as well as professional reasons, he has decided he needs a change of scenery.

(Photo: Dave Howarth – CameraSport via Getty Images)