They have announced on twitter that they have retired the number 22 shirt in honor of Jude Bellingham - the young lad they sold to Dortmund. He made 44 appearances for them over just 1 season and they have now retired his number.
What idiots. No shirt number in any sport should ever be retired it's a silly idea. More so after so few games.
There is a strong argument in favour of retiring a shirt number *if* a player died while playing for the club.
Can you imagine if we retired a shirt number every time a young player moved on. We'd be into 4 figures in squad numbers now
Didn’t Man City retire a number when Marc Vivien-Foe passed away whilst playing? I get it in that situation but because he’s been sold is pathetic.
Lens and Lyon also retired the 17 shirt for Marc Vivien-Foe. Not sure if anything happened for Sala travelling from France to Cardiff last year - but have just seen that Chris Barker and Peter Whittingham have also died recently so Cardiff appears to have something of a curse...
Set of silly *****. to be fair the money he’s made them is far more attractive to them that playing 500 games. It might have just dug them out of a very big pile of sh*te.
Yeah no.23. I think Santos retired their 10 shirt after Pelé left. The Bellingham thing just trivialises it.
The NHL retired the number 99 jersey league wide when Wayne Gretzky retired. That’s the only non-death shirt retirement I agree with. He was a true once in a lifetime talent.
wonder if they would have retired the number if he had been sold for 500k ? not a chance, its because of the millions they received for a young lad who as played 40 times for brum, pathetic imo.
Meanwhile back in the real world, we're still letting lesser mortals wear Glavin's number 4 shirt. Even Tom bloody Kennedy got to wear it. #properfootballclub
Only time I think a shirt should be retired is if the current player dies or has a life changing injury and even then I am not sure its right
I can remember when we were that bad that they once held up the substitution board with number 11 on it and the whole team walked off...
It's meaningless tokenism. A pretence of nobility. A number can't be retired. It's there in the background as....er...a number. Why not thank him, put him in a programme, name something after him or do something more sensible. Silly and patronizing