Kyle Walker has revealed that he almost quit Manchester City for Bayern Munich last summer for personal reasons.
The City captain, who had been left out of the starting XI for the Champions League final win over Inter Milan in June, says his decision to nearly leave the club for Germany had nothing to do with football.
Walker’s personal life has attracted lurid tabloid headlines in recent years and the defender admitted he had reached a point where he felt he needed to move away from England.
The 33-year-old eventually opted to stay at City and could now guide them to a fourth trophy as captain this season should the Premier League champions overcome Manchester United in Saturday’s FA Cup final at Wembley. But it could easily have been different.
“It would have been a lot different because I’d have been at a different club but that was a moment in my personal life that I felt I wanted to move away from England and it was nothing to do with footballing reasons,” he said.
“It was something personal to me where I thought that taking a break from England might have been right for me.
“But, first and foremost, I have to think about the football. It’s what I love doing and I felt that, come the end of it, I would be a lot happier at Manchester City than I would at Bayern Munich.”
‘Me and Pep have a great relationship’
Walker, who went as far as agreeing personal terms with Bayern, ended up having a private meal with City manager Pep Guardiola at the Japanese restaurant MUSU in Manchester in August. But the defender insists he had already resolved he was going to stay at City before his heart-to-heart with Guardiola.
“Me and Pep have a great relationship,” he said. “There’s not many of us that can say we’ve been here since almost the start of his reign. I was playing at Tottenham for the first year [Guardiola was at City] but we’re still here together after all the ups and downs.
“We have to have a good relationship because I’m club captain and the middle person between the lads and the manager to make sure everything goes swimmingly.
“That meal was for him to tell me how much he appreciates me and what I do for the team and what the lads appreciate me for. It wasn’t for him to beg me to stay because my mind was already made up so it was just two grown men going out for a bit of dinner.”
Walker had impressed his City team-mates with the way he handled being left out of the starting line-up in Istanbul and ended up being voted in by the players as the new club captain in the wake of Ilkay Gundogan’s exit for Barcelona.