James Milner has recalled the frightening moment he feared he and Phil Jagielka were about to be kidnapped during the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.
Several members of Roy Hodgson‘s squad had gone out for a round of golf during the disastrous tournament that saw England dumped out at the group stage.
Milner, then a Manchester City player, and Everton defender Jagielka paired up on the golf course but made the mistake of deciding to walk back to the hotel when they’d finished.
‘We went for a round of golf and we couldn’t quite get the holes in and I think we were in the middle of the back nine and the hotel was literally there, you could see it,’ Milner recalled to 2014 team-mate Ben Foster in an Amazon Prime show.
‘You boys played as well and you finished just in front of us. Me and Jags said we’ll finish these last two off and then we’ll come.
‘So you’ve gone off and I think the car was going to come back for us. I said to the guy, “we’ll leave the buggies here and then we’ll just walk back.”
‘Obviously we have been told you can’t really leave the hotel. So we have come out the gate and the gate has shut behind us.
We’re walking down the street and we’ve turned around and there is a group of guys. We’re glancing and we’re walking a bit quicker and they’re walking a bit quicker.
‘Then they start jogging, so we start running and we’re like, “we’re in trouble here.” So we start sprinting, we can out-run them.
‘So we’re running down and the next thing, a car pulls up next to us. So I’m like, we’re getting kidnapped here, it’s game over.
‘The door slides open, mid-run and it’s the boys, the security and it’s “quick, get in!” We jumped in, on the move, back to the hotel.’
Luckily, the pair escaped unscathed and Milner, now 36, is still going strong in Liverpool’s midfield. Defender Jagielka is 40 but plays for Championship club Stoke City.
The 2014 tournament won’t be remembered too fondly by either player. England finished bottom of their group after defeats to Italy and Uruguay, as well as a goalless draw with Costa Rica when they were already out.
Milner played for Liverpool in their Carabao Cup defeat to Manchester City on Thursday night but went off with a suspected hamstring injury.
