Before everything else: of course Kyle Walker is an England and Premier League great. There is a reasonable argument he will be remembered as the most consistently vital player in perhaps the pre-eminent English club side, facilitating a high line no other team ever really mastered.
Ninety-three England caps, two international finals, six Premier League titles, two FA Cups and a Champions League winner’s medal. Neymar and Eden Hazard both called him their toughest opponent. Four PFA team of the year nominations and one for the Fifpro World XI. He was, for six or seven years, truly elite.
But first gradually, and then suddenly, the terminal decline of his physical talents has taken hold. The man whose BBC podcast is often shared with the tagline “You’ll Never Beat Kyle Walker” has been beaten by Timo Werner and Adama Traore.
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Read MoreThere were mistakes and missteps against Crystal Palace and Liverpool and Juventus. Before that, there was a lowlight compilation assigning blame for most of the Euro 2024 goals England conceded to Walker, before he was somehow named in the official team of the tournament. Manchester City have won just two of the 11 matches he has started this season, and 11 of the other 17.
Asking to leave Manchester feels like a logical response to reality, not so much leaving a sinking ship as realising he is increasingly to blame for the water gushing in at the sides.
And that would probably be that, if he were anyone else. He went on too long, as greats so often do. Pep Guardiola perhaps did more harm than good in convincing him not to join Bayern Munich over sushi in 2023.
But then there is everything else. Walker’s sexual incontinence has made him a red-top darling whose infamy has long breached the barriers of traditional sporting audiences. Having one child with your influencer mistress could be a mistake, but two really isn’t a good look.
Especially when that influencer, Lauryn Goodman, starts a podcast about the struggles of raising those children with an absent father in the public eye. She also invited a newspaper reporter to follow her around England’s Euro 2024 match against Denmark, reportedly the first time her four-year-old son had watched his father play football.
This is before the expensive public lawsuit in which Goodman is demanding even greater child support payments – £1.8m for a house, £12,500 monthly and more than £100,000 in additional fees.
Then there are the two sex workers invited to his home during lockdown, which he apologised for, and the video appearing to show him flashing people in a bar.
He was also mentioned during Benjamin Mendy’s employment tribunal demanding £11m in unpaid wages as one of several City players to attend parties breaching lockdown restrictions. There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing by Walker past attending these parties.
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Read MoreIf you want a fair guide of how Walker will be remembered – what his legacy will be in English football – Ashley Cole provides a decent template.
Walker had fewer publicised affairs but more unplanned children, and rightly or wrongly his reputation is probably boosted by not breaking the heart of a beloved pop star, or doing so in the golden age of the paparazzi.
But even 15 years after Cole’s divorce, after the public penitence and transformation to a bearded, buttoned-up backroom coach, the legacy of his footballing success and private failings are still intertwined.
Without getting all “won’t someone think of the philanderer”, Walker will never just be a great footballer. He has done this to himself.
And so now to Italy, which the author Guia Soncini once called “a republic founded on adultery”. Depending on who is telling the story, this is either a fresh start for Walker as he navigates a potential £27m divorce, or a final chance for his marriage to wife Annie Kilner.
A move to Inter or AC Milan will help escape the English press for now, but will also lock him in this moment in the national memory. Football has never come close to figuring out its relationship with great players who are evidently flawed people.
The two are often treated as totally separate, yet they clearly aren’t: as Walker’s life has collapsed in on itself, so has his career.
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