{"id":640525,"date":"2026-04-30T12:18:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T12:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/640525\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T12:18:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T12:18:10","slug":"ashley-young-former-england-man-utd-and-aston-villa-star-to-retire-aged-40","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/640525\/","title":{"rendered":"Ashley Young: Former England, Man Utd and Aston Villa star to retire aged 40"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Former England international Ashley Young has announced he is retiring from playing at the age of 40.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Young started out at Watford before going on to play for Aston Villa, Manchester United, Inter Milan and Everton, starting as a winger before becoming a full-back.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He ends his career at Ipswich Town, having joined the Portman Road club on a one-year deal in July 2025 after being released by Everton.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Young made his England debut in November 2007 and won 39 caps for the national team, scoring seven goals.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s been some journey that I only dreamt of as a boy,&#8221; Young wrote on social media.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;But with this dream there has to be an ending and Saturday might be the last game of my professional career &#8230; 23 years and OUT.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ipswich head into their final game of the Championship season against Queens Park Rangers on Saturday in the second automatic promotion place.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">They are one point above third-placed Millwall and two points better off than Middlesbrough, who are in fourth and, if they are overtaken by either of those teams, will face the play-offs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former England international Ashley Young has announced he is retiring from playing at the age of 40. Young&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":640526,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-640525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=640525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/640526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}