The talk before the game was about departing Everton captain Seamus Coleman, who has said he will not be playing for the club next season after 17 seasons there.<\/p>\n
Republic of Ireland full-back Coleman, 37, joined as a 20-year-old for only \u00a360,000 from Irish side Sligo Rovers in 2009 and has gone on to become Everton’s leading appearance maker in the Premier League era.<\/p>\n
He came on to a standing ovation as a substitute in the 88th minute for his 434th Toffees match, moving ahead of Dixie Dean and Leon Osman in 10th spot in the club’s all-time appearances list.<\/p>\n
However, he could not inspire an Everton recovery as Sunderland added a third goal three minutes later, with the Toffees dropping to 12th and with their own European hopes all but ended.<\/p>\n
Coleman then was given a guard of honour after the match by his team-mates, although a large number of home supporters and all the away fans had already left the ground.<\/p>\n
“I arrived here as a 20-year-old boy from Sligo Rovers, just hoping to impress enough to even make one appearance for Everton,” said Coleman. “To go on and become captain and set a new club record for most Premier League appearances is something that back then was beyond my wildest dreams.<\/p>\n
“After such a big decision to end my period as a player here, I will take some time to decide what comes next. The club and the manager have been brilliant with me and there is an opportunity to stay here in a coaching role, but I will take a break with my family, play the games for the Republic of Ireland over the summer and then decide what comes next for us.”<\/p>\n
Everton play at relegation-threatened Tottenham on the final day but would need a large win and a number of results to go their way to have any chance of European football.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The talk before the game was about departing Everton captain Seamus Coleman, who has said he will not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":677169,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-677168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=677168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/677169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=677168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=677168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=677168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}