James Milner has recalled the time he believed he and former Everton defender Phil Jagielka were targets of a bizarre kidnapping plot during England's 2014 World Cup campaign in Brazil.
The Liverpool midfielder, 36, was named in Roy Hodgson's 23-man squad for the finals in Brazil along with former Everton and current Stoke City defender Jagielka.
And although the Three Lions and their fans would witness a tournament to forget as England crashed out of the group stages in embarrassing fashion after failing to win any of their games against Uruguay, Italy or Costa Rica, the former Manchester City man best remembers his time Manaus for all the wrong reasons.
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Speaking to former Three Lions team-mate Ben Foster, Milner recalled the moment he and Jagielka feared for their safety at the finals after they had spent one of their afternoons playing golf at a course near England's base.
"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 reminisced in an interview with Amazon Prime show. "So you've [Foster] 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."
He continued: "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."
The Brazil finals would prove to be the final World Cup for the Liverpool midfielder, who announced his retirement from international football after Euro 2016. Meanwhile, the 2014 finals would be the last international tournament of Jagielka's career, who now finds himself now playing in England's second tier at the age of 40.
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