James Milner has opened up on his decision to remain teetotal during the entirety of his professional career.
The Liverpool star has entered his 20th year playing at a senior level, having made his debut for Leeds United back in 2002. While he will not feature this weekend, the next time Milner does play, he will be making his 600th appearance in the Premier League.
Only three players have made more appearances in the top-flight since its inception in 1992. Gareth Barry, Ryan Giggs and Frank Lampard are the only men to break the 600 appearances barrier, a club Milner will likely soon be joining.
At the heart of his long career has been his professional approach to training. Part of that professionalism comes from his diet, with the Englishman refusing to drink a drop of alcohol since he made his debut.
“I lost count of the amount of times people said: ‘Oh, just have one,’ or ‘Can I be there when you have your first drink?’ They would probably have regretted being there if it had happened; I could have turned pretty ruthless," he told The Guardian.
"You don’t know, I could have been a hugger and a kisser as well. You are just learning at that age and thinking: ‘What can I do to be the best?’ Alcohol is not the best thing for you? Right, I won’t do that. After training I’d practice corners and free-kicks rather than playing on the PlayStation.
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"That obviously changes. After training every day five years ago I would have been doing shooting and my finishing was fantastic. When you get older you can’t be hitting balls every day after training, so you have to develop. I will do yoga tonight when I get home."
Milner will miss the trip to Tottenham due to concussion protocols following the win over Napoli in midweek. But boss Jurgen Klopp is hopeful that he will return to training on Tuesday.
"When you go through a concussion protocol you are not available for the next game because you have to go through different stages. So, he is fine but still that's how it is [and] rightly so," Klopp said.
"We have to go to different stages and that means he is available for non-contact training on Monday and full contact training on Tuesday if everything goes well. Until then that's what we expect because he was yesterday already good.
"A big game for us, a massive game for us. Difficult as well. Spurs away. I didn’t count now the points distance between us and them but we cannot be picky with opponents and games and where we want to get points – we have to go for it, definitely.
"But it’s difficult, we all know Tottenham is a side that is well organised, defending on an extremely high level and counter-attacking is a massive thing now. The last two games when they had to chase the game, you saw the offensive power as well. So we are prepared for a confident, strong opponent."
