Manchester City and England defender Kyle Walker speaks on City's hope for the season after signing a 2 year contract extension at the Etihad
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00:00 Kyle, huge congratulations on the new deal.
00:03 What's your overriding feeling having signed this new contract?
00:06 No, I'm absolutely delighted for me and my family,
00:12 for everyone that's put in the hard work to get me here
00:16 and to represent this fantastic club for, you know,
00:20 definitely another two more seasons, hopefully many more.
00:23 You know, it's a real honour.
00:25 This is your seventh season at City.
00:27 It's been a hugely successful period for you.
00:30 What were the main factors that convinced you to stay for a little bit longer?
00:35 It's the team. It's the team.
00:37 I think that in this team, there's something special.
00:41 Obviously, just coming back off an amazing high of last season
00:45 and winning the treble and finally getting the Champions League,
00:48 which is the one trophy that, you know, we didn't have as a group and as collectively.
00:54 I wanted to go and do it again.
00:55 I wanted, you know, the lads have got that hunger again
00:59 to go and achieve something really special again this season, fingers crossed.
01:03 So I wanted to be a part of it and I didn't want to miss out on that.
01:06 You mentioned it there.
01:07 This is a very special group of players.
01:09 The trophies that we've won tells everybody that.
01:12 What do you think, if you had to pinpoint the main reasons
01:16 and the main factors as to what makes this group special,
01:19 what do you think those are?
01:20 I think it starts from the top with the manager
01:23 and his hunger and drive to make sure that, you know,
01:27 not just every Saturday when we turn up to play a football game
01:31 or if it's in a midweek, it's every training session,
01:34 you need to be at 100%.
01:37 And I think that starts from him.
01:39 And then it's down to us senior members of the team that need to,
01:43 you know, try and make sure that the lads are
01:48 probably going off of what he believes in
01:50 and make sure that we're drumming that into him,
01:53 you know, day in, day out, that we need to keep these standards.
01:56 We've set the standards that we have since I joined the club seven years ago.
02:00 And I don't think that we fell off, obviously.
02:03 We've not gone and won a Premier League in one of them seasons,
02:06 but I still thought that we did well.
02:08 We just, it was unfortunate that it was a very good Liverpool team
02:12 that ran away with it that season.
02:13 So, listen, we've set the bar, we've set the standards
02:17 and we need to just keep working on that and keep getting better
02:19 if we can do and which we need to do.
02:22 - When you came to City from Tottenham,
02:24 I think everyone sort of considered you to be one of the best
02:27 fullbacks in English football.
02:28 But I would say now you are, it's widely accepted
02:31 that you're the best right back in the game.
02:34 How do you feel your game has developed
02:36 during that period that you've spent here in Manchester?
02:39 - I think it's just matured.
02:41 I think with age, with experiences, you know,
02:44 on the field with the different scenarios that you face,
02:47 different occasions, whether that be,
02:50 obviously when I signed from Tottenham, I hadn't won anything.
02:52 I played in a lot of finals, but to get over the line,
02:56 we found it difficult.
02:58 So when you get over that line with the players that I looked,
03:02 I still remember the day at Arsenal,
03:04 at Wembley against Arsenal in the Cowboy Cup,
03:06 and you're looking around and you've got Aguero,
03:08 you've got Silva, you've got Kompany,
03:11 and lo and behold, these three players step up
03:13 and score the goal, which then goes and wins my first trophy.
03:16 So hopefully now, you know, the younger players like Eurico,
03:20 and Droskos that haven't gone on and, you know,
03:23 clinched something can look at me and Kevin,
03:26 like I looked at, you know, David Kompany and Aguero,
03:31 and they look at us and say,
03:32 well, they've got over the line so many times, you know,
03:34 they'll be the players to get us over that line again.
03:36 - You get to work with Pep every day.
03:39 He's got an amazing backroom team.
03:41 The medical guys here are amazing, our nutritionists.
03:44 All of that set up at City is really strong.
03:48 Just explain to me how that helps a professional footballer
03:52 be at their optimum every single time they go out on the field.
03:56 - Well, we have no excuses.
03:57 Everything that we have here, the facilities have you just said,
04:02 you know, from the chefs to the laundry, to the kit men,
04:06 to the nutritionists, it's all top.
04:08 So if they're providing what they can do,
04:10 all at their very best, it gives us no excuse
04:12 to go out and perform at our very best.
04:14 There's no excuses, and we should demand that
04:16 from us as a group of players that, you know,
04:19 this club and this organisation has brought in the very best
04:22 of their category, what they can do.
04:25 So we just need to make sure that we're turning up
04:28 every game day, putting them three points on the board
04:31 and moving on to the next one.
04:33 - You've been wearing the captain's armband in pre-season
04:36 and throughout our early games so far this season.
04:39 Is that a big source of pride for you
04:41 to captain this amazing team?
04:43 - It's an honour to have that armband of some of the players
04:50 that have wore it in the past, which are a few names
04:53 I've just mentioned there.
04:55 And then to obviously offer a back of a treble-winning season
04:59 to then go and captain the club for the first time
05:03 and win a Super Cup.
05:04 It was a... I felt very proud of myself,
05:08 but again, you know, the vote's going to come in
05:10 and the lads will determine who they want,
05:13 you know, to be their captain for the foreseeable season.
05:16 And, you know, I wish whoever it is, you know, all the success.
05:19 Hopefully it's me, but we'll see what happens there.
05:23 - You've won 15 major trophies at City
05:25 and you're close to 300 appearances.
05:28 If we go back, rewind seven years to when you came here,
05:31 did you honestly, hand on heart,
05:33 could you have ever imagined that this would be sat here today
05:36 with those numbers?
05:37 - No, no, definitely not.
05:40 One Premier League would have been more than enough.
05:44 But then once we achieved one Premier League
05:46 in the way that we achieved the Premier League
05:48 with the 100 points, I knew that we needed more
05:52 and I knew that we should get more.
05:54 So I'm very honoured and, you know, very lucky
05:57 to have been a part of this, you know, great team
06:00 for this amount of years and, you know,
06:02 a further two more years now
06:04 where hopefully we can pick up more silverware.
06:07 - There are plenty of young talent coming into the first team
06:11 from our academy.
06:12 We seem to be producing a very high quality type of player now
06:16 through our academy system.
06:18 As somebody who knows the game inside out like you do,
06:20 what's your assessment of kind of the level of these kids
06:23 who are coming into the first team cell?
06:25 - It's getting better and better.
06:27 I think it's full, you know, credit to the youth system
06:31 and how they're nurturing and bringing these players through.
06:35 You know, Rico Lewis, when I first joined here,
06:38 they was filling Breem Diaz, two 17-year-old kids,
06:43 basically, training with the first team
06:45 and from leaving Tottenham,
06:47 where they had exceptional talent down there,
06:49 to then come here and see them too,
06:51 it was like, what are they doing wrong down there?
06:53 But there was actually not doing anything wrong.
06:55 It's just, we had two gems in the team there
06:59 at that precise moment in time
07:00 and thankfully enough, City keep producing these gems
07:04 and we need to keep it going because that gives us the hunger
07:08 because they're on our toes, they're biting at our heels
07:10 and making sure that we put in the performances
07:13 that we have been doing over the years.
07:15 - I must ask you as well about the treble winning season.
07:17 It's the first chance we've had
07:18 to speak to you properly about that.
07:20 Obviously, amazing, remarkable.
07:22 Has it sunk in yet and the gravity
07:24 and the size of the achievement that you were part of,
07:27 do you really recognise that at this moment?
07:28 - Yeah, definitely now.
07:29 Even when people come up to you in the streets
07:33 or as I was just saying in the interview
07:36 before I played golfing up in Scotland
07:38 after the game at Loch Lomond
07:39 and there was a Man City fan there
07:42 and he's come up and just said,
07:43 I just want to say thank you and how proud I am.
07:47 All my friends work in London and I'm from London
07:50 and the Tottenham or Arsenal fans or something like that
07:54 but for what you guys went on and achieved last season,
07:58 he just said thanks
07:59 and you could see what it actually meant to him then.
08:02 And little moments like that,
08:05 he didn't have to come up to me and say thank you.
08:07 He could have come up and just did what 99% of the other people
08:10 and say, can I have a picture and that be it
08:12 but to show the appreciation for what we're doing,
08:15 that's when it really hits home and it means a lot.
08:18 - What's the biggest challenge then, do you think,
08:21 for a team who were right at the very top of the game,
08:24 we're having huge success, is there a danger?
08:27 Is it complacency?
08:28 I mean, that won't happen here
08:29 but how do we maintain our position at the top basically?
08:32 - We've got to demand that.
08:35 Us captains have got to demand that from the same squad again
08:40 in the new additions.
08:42 We've set the bar and each year it's like,
08:44 well, how do you get better?
08:45 How do we get better?
08:46 And we seem to be doing that each year.
08:49 Now we've probably gone to the top of the top
08:51 where to stay there, there is only down
08:54 because are we going to go and win a treble again?
08:58 Who knows, we could do
09:00 but the odds on say that we're not going to
09:03 but we need to make sure that we're there competing
09:08 to the later stages in all competitions
09:10 and fighting for the silverware.
09:12 Then when you get to the later stages
09:15 with the semifinals, the finals,
09:17 then you can start dreaming and having a little bit of hope
09:19 but I think one thing that we've done really well here
09:22 is we take one game at a time,
09:24 we take one game at a time, chalk that off,
09:26 get the three points and move on to the next one.
09:28 We don't plan for the future,
09:30 we plan for the present
09:31 and the present starts on Saturday against West Ham
09:34 where we've had a perfect start
09:35 but we want to continue that now.
09:38 - You mentioned the incomings there,
09:39 we've also lost a few key players.
09:42 We do this every summer, we rejig the squad.
09:45 What's your assessment of the way we're shaping up
09:47 at this point?
09:49 - No, the players that we lost, my good gosh,
09:52 what great players, obviously Gundo,
09:54 even Cole, to see the talent and mark him,
09:59 he's difficult and he's going to be some hell of a player.
10:02 Riyad, he's proved for many years
10:04 just what he can do and his qualities
10:06 but I feel that the players that we've brought in
10:10 with Josco, he's a Rolls-Royce of a centre-back,
10:13 the age that he has and the quality that he shows
10:16 on the ball with the manager,
10:18 I feel the world's his oyster basically.
10:21 Kovac, he's won four Champions Leagues,
10:25 what more do I say?
10:25 He's not inexperienced,
10:28 he's been in these high-pressure games before
10:30 so I feel that he can add something where
10:33 he's won it and he's won it again.
10:35 So we haven't done that.
10:37 So he can bring his experience to that front.
10:41 I think Mateus, I've seen him at Old Trafford
10:45 when Man United played Wolves
10:47 and I said to Bernardo and Ruben, flipping hell,
10:51 this guy's all right.
10:53 Lo and behold, two weeks later he's in the building.
10:56 So I feel that it's been a great transfer window.
11:00 I feel that we've got the positions
11:03 and the players in the right areas that we needed
11:05 and then Jeremy, obviously quick, raw
11:09 with Pep's guidance again
11:12 and sharpening up on a few certain things
11:15 which he probably knows that he needs to bring to his game.
11:18 I think it's going to be fantastic
11:19 and a great season for all of them
11:21 and hopefully as a team, as a collective.
11:23 Exciting times ahead.
11:24 Well, Kyle, this is great news.
11:26 The City fans are going to be buzzing with this.
11:28 Congratulations once again
11:30 and good luck for the rest of your time here.
11:32 Cheers, thank you ever so much.