Kyle Walker isn’t heading off to a Milan catwalk – it’s a dead end that means only one thing for his career, writes IAN LADYMAN

Many years ago I was in the company of David Platt in Rome. There was a big Champions League game taking place and Platt was in town as a pundit.

On the way to dinner, Platt was stopped in the street a number of times. Handshakes, autographs, slaps on the back. Selfies weren’t a thing back then, thankfully.

It had been 15 years since Platt had played in Serie A and it hadn’t been in Rome. Bari, Juventus and Sampdoria had been his clubs in the mid-1990s.

But that didn’t seem to matter because to the football folk of the Italian capital, Platt was a reminder of what their game had once been.

Platt had been a star in a galaxy of sporting jewels. When he played in Serie A, so did Ruud Gullit, Jurgen Klinsmann, Marco van Basten and Maradona.

In England, meanwhile, we were so impressed by the glamour, theatre and sheer damn sexiness of it that Channel 4 started showing the highlights and we all sat there and wished we could be part of it.

And now it is no longer like that. In fact it had stopped being like that by the time Platt tried to make his way to dinner that evening.

Italian football is not entirely impoverished. The completion of the Champions League’s fancy new first stage shows Inter to have qualified for the last 16 in fourth, only two points off table-toppers Liverpool.

So, no, Italian football retains its relevance but that’s about the most we can say about a scene that has long since forgotten how to run itself and as a result has lost its cache, its lure and, perhaps most importantly, much of its money.

This is the environment Kyle Walker and Dele Alli have walked into over the last week or so. Serie A was once a place to earn a good wage and widen one’s football experience. Platt came back to play for Arsenal, for example.

Now it’s not that. Now it’s at best a holding room for players struggling for high-profile options in England. At its worst, it’s the footballing equivalent of a retirement home.

I can hear the outraged shouts from the back already. Inter reached the 2023 Champions League final, but these things can happen.

When Liverpool won the tournament in 2005, for example, they finished fifth in the Premier League, almost 40 points from the summit and three points behind Everton.

It’s easy to see why Alli and Walker have made their moves to Como and to Milan. Alli – afflicted by injuries – had all but run out of options once a spell at Everton yielded just one league start.

Walker, meanwhile, will undoubtedly hope some settled football at the San Siro will keep him high in the thoughts of England manager Thomas Tuchel.

I am a huge fan of Walker. I first enjoyed watching him in Mauricio Pochettino’s athletic Tottenham team 10 years ago.

At Manchester City he grew into one of the finest right backs the Premier League has seen. He is one of those pleasing types who has made the very best of his talent.

But if he does manage to keep his England place from the distance of Serie A, then he will be bucking a recent trend that has seen players such as Tammy Abraham, Fikayo Tomori, Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Chris Smalling leave home for Italy only to disappear from the international reckoning.

I admire all four players for taking the step. The first three were not going to play regularly at Chelsea while Smalling had fallen off the perch at Old Trafford. They could have sat tight on good contracts.

But they chose a challenge and have played enough football while in Italy to say it’s worked out. Equally, they cannot say their moves acted as springboards. In terms of England selection, they have ceased to exist.

If you wanted to be harsh – or maybe just realistic – about it, Abraham, Tomori, Loftus-Cheek and Smalling found their level and it’s one that, on the whole, sits far enough beneath the upper echelons of the Premier League to have made a difference when it comes to bigger pictures.

Italian football still has some very fine native coaches. They are arguably better than ours. But the attractiveness of their product has fallen away on a failure to keep pace with the modernisation of the European game.

Many of their stadia, for example, are awful. As a result, TV rights are now sold at half the price Sky, TNT and the rest pay to show the Premier League and so the wheels of steady decline continue to turn.

It may be slightly different for Walker. He has played 93 times for his country and appeared at five major tournaments. Tuchel would like to have a fit and flying Walker to call upon as he transitions England from the Gareth Southgate era.

It’s just a matter of whether palatable performances in Italy’s top league are considered strong enough evidence of enduring worth these days.

When Platt left Aston Villa for Bari in the wake of the 1990 World Cup, he had just turned 25 and strolled on to a catwalk already trodden by players like Trevor Francis, Graeme Souness, Mark Hateley, Ray Wilkins, Ian Rush, Paul Gascoigne, Jimmy Greaves and Denis Law.

It’s not a catwalk any more. More of a dead end.

Payday should offset schedule concerns 

Chelsea and Manchester City will bank £40million for turning up to FIFA’s Club World Cup summer jamboree in the States. The winner (who cares?) will take home £80m.

Keep those figures in mind the next time anybody from either club talks about burnout and the demands of the schedule.

Because exactly at the time they should be resting, they will be busy earning.

No need for further punishment for Oliver 

Michael Oliver will be back in action this weekend and why on earth shouldn’t he be?

He made a mistake in the Wolves versus Arsenal game and it was a big one. But it was a mistake.

If we stood down everybody in football who messed up, then there would be nobody left on the field, in the dugout or indeed the Press seats.

Tuchel’s major concern 

Phil Foden says he was played out of position in Euro 2024 while Jude Bellingham – 10 goals for Real Madrid since November – has suggested there is too much pressure on English players.

And this is one of the enduring issues that Thomas Tuchel faces when he begins his tenure as national coach. 

When things go wrong for England, there are never enough people in the room ready to take ownership.

Man United stadium latest 

The latest chat around the building of a new Old Trafford suggests Manchester United will pay for the stadium themselves, while the taxpayer may be called upon to contribute to surrounding infrastructure and redevelopment.

That sounds like a plan I could be persuaded to buy into, but let’s see what the breakdown of numbers looks like if and when it finally arrives.

United’s new kingmaker Sir Jim Ratcliffe remains a tax exile. The club’s majority owners, the Glazers, live in Florida and have been a drain on the club finances for two decades.

The mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham has been on breakfast TV talking about making the city ‘the global capital of football’ – London had four world-class venues at the last count – but the very least that is required from this whole project is financial transparency.

If United really can afford to build their own super stadium, then that’s fabulous. If they can’t, it’s nobody’s problem but their own.