Why Aston Villa's James Milner is the footballer's footballer

Jun 23 2010 by Mat Kendrick

From Westbrook Juniors to South Africa and the World Cup with England. It’s been some ride so far but what next for the Villa star who has already attracted a £20m offer from Manchester City?

James Milner deliberately smashes three footballs against the crossbar of a goal-frame at Aston Villa’s Bodymoor Heath training ground.

One by the one the balls, fired from the edge of the penalty area, bounce off the woodwork and drop perfectly into three strategically placed wheelie-bins before Villa’s England World Cup star smiles and nonchalantly walks away.

It is not real. It is a promotional viral doing the rounds on the internet which owes more to the skills of the club’s video department than Milner himself.

But, such is Milner’s all-round ability and burgeoning reputation as one of the country’s finest young players that there is a believability about the clip, a feeling that it probably wouldn’t have required too much trickery in the edit, a sense that if he’d wanted to the ultra-professional playmaker could have done it without the smoke and mirrors.

For practice makes perfect and if there’s one thing that sets Milner apart from many of his peers it is his penchant for practice, practice, practice.

Dedication’s what you need if you want to be a record breaker and that’s certainly true of the 24-year-old Yorkshire youngster.

All of his achievements to date, including being England’s most capped under-21 star and Villa’s most expensive signing, stem back to his hours on the parks pitches as a prodigious youngster.

The talismanic figure Manchester City are ready to break the bank for, having had an opening £20 million offer rejected by Villa, first honed his talents and his work ethic as a schoolboy with Westbrook Juniors Under-12s in Horsforth near his family home.

Jim Ryan, a teacher who coached Milner in the junior team in the mid-1990s, recalls how even as a 10-year-old there were suggestions that the player would go on to represent England.

“James’s dad brought him along and asked if he could play for the team,” remembered Ryan. “I had my doubts because he was small and a couple of years younger than the other lads. I needn’t have worried.

“He was so gifted that I remember, clear as a bell, saying to someone on the touchline during the game against Wigton Moor, ‘watch that little fella, one day he’ll play for England and you heard it here first’.”

It wasn’t long before Milner was spotted by his first club Leeds United, the team he has supported all his life, and from there he joined Newcastle United and subsequently Villa, who are now battling to keep hold of him in the face of growing pressure from Manchester City.

“I can’t take any credit for him going to Leeds,” says Ryan. “Lots of people had been watching and recommending him. From my point of view it was just great to have had him with us for that one memorable season, the first stage of his career if you like.

“As a player he had everything; a capacity for hard work, enormous energy, excellent co-ordination, great awareness, and a lovely control of the ball.

“More than that, you could tell he enjoyed playing the game and that he was a sensible kid.