Alan Shearer has revealed his message to Dan Burn after the defender's heroic Carabao Cup final performance for Newcastle.
Burn etched his name into Magpies folklore on Sunday with a gargantuan display against Liverpool at Wembley. The 6ft 7in star from Blyth broke the deadlock on the stroke of half-time, breaking away from Alexis Mac Allister and meeting Kieran Trippier’s corner to score a towering header.
And his incredible afternoon did not stop there. The defender demonstrated grit and energy while putting on a defensive masterclass on his way helping Newcastle secure a 2-1 win over the best team in England this season, ending a 70-year domestic trophy drought.
Having become the first Newcastle player to score at Wembley since 2000, Burn was awarded the man of the match award - fresh off the back of receiving his first senior England call-up earlier in the week. And he caught up with another local Magpies legend, Shearer, for a pint during the post-match celebrations.
Speaking on The Rest Is Football podcast, a delighted Shearer said: “Where do we start with big Dan Burn? I was having a pint with him last night,” before revealing his seven-word message to the latest Newcastle hero: “I said ‘you might as well f***ing retire, man!'
“I said ‘because the week you’ve had is not getting any better’. When I said that he replied [tongue-in-cheek] ‘I might just go [retire] on Friday at Wembley.’”
Shearer added: “The Newcastle players are all off to Dubai as a team and I said to Dan, ‘it’s typical, you get called into the England squad and you can’t have five or six days break in the sun now.' He said ‘you know what, I don’t give a damn.’ He can’t wait to get up with England.”
Shearer, who knew a thing or two about scoring thumping headers throughout his own career, also gushed: “It was a fantastic header. Eddie [Howe] afterwards said they’d been working on set-pieces for the past two weeks and how they could hurt Liverpool. I mean it worked perfectly.
“What a header. But even if he hadn’t scored that goal, the rest of his performance was so aggressive and he didn’t give anyone a sniff. It was absolutely magnificent.”
Burn was born in the Northumberland town of Blyth and was a boyhood Magpies fan, having had a season ticket at St James’ Park. He even headed down to Wembley for the FA Cup semi-final defeat to Chelsea back in 2000.
At one point, he was actually on Newcastle's books as a kid but suffered the heartbreak of being released by the club around Christmas 2003 at the age of 11. At the time, thanks to his gangly frame, he was a goalkeeper up until the age of 14.
He then made his way through Non League with Darlington up to Fulham and Birmingham in the Championship, Wigan in League One, Brighton in the Premier League, and, finally, Newcastle in 2022.
