Liverpool midfielder James Milner has revealed he was offered a trial at Everton aged 10 before he was brutally ghosted by the Blues - just months before signing for boyhood club Leeds United.
With a career spanning over 20 years, Milner has an affirmed status as one of the finest and most dedicated professionals of his generation and has won multiple Premier League titles with Manchester City and Liverpool, and the Champions League since moving to Anfield in 2015.
In addition to his impressive trophy haul, the midfielder has made over 600 Premier League appearances for five clubs including Leeds United, Newcastle, Manchester City, Aston Villa and the Reds. However, the 36-year-old's career could have panned out differently had it not been for a spell of bad weather in the winter of 1996.
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Speaking to the official Liverpool Football Club podcast, We Are Liverpool, Milner admitted that he had been offered the chance to trial at the academy of the Reds' rivals from across Stanley Park, Everton, just months before joining the books of Leeds United.
"I was playing for a local team in Leeds and I was scouted by Everton," the midfielder told hosts of the podcast Robbie Fowler and Peter McDowall. "I was scouted by Everton and asked to go on a trial game, it was just before Christmas time - when I was 10, I think it was - and the game got called off because of snow.
"I never heard anything and Leeds came on three months later, February or March time. I went for a trial and, yeah, they signed me then when I was ten years old.
"At that point, like, I hadn't even thought about being a professional footballer, I was just playing at school," Milner admitted "Until they [Leeds] rang, oh yeah, that's something you could do. Before that, I don't know whether I was young, I never thought I wanted to be a footballer here. At that point, I went to Leeds and that was it."
The Liverpool vice-captain progressed all the way through Leeds' Thorpe Arch academy before making his top-flight debut against West Ham United at 16 years old under the Whites' then-manager Terry Venables.
The Yorkshireman would spend two years in Leeds' senior ranks before making the move to St James' Park in 2004 following the relegation of his boyhood club.
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