Lewington retired as club captain at the end of last season, having made an emotional final appearance at Stadium MK against Grimsby Town in April, followed by a brief farewell cameo at the end of an away game at Swindon.<\/p>\n
The Freedom of the City honour, though, came out of the blue.<\/p>\n
“When I was told I was being given the Freedom of Milton Keynes, I was obviously very surprised – I was a little drunk when they first told me, so it didn’t quite kick in. <\/p>\n
“But it means the world. The fact that so few people have been honoured is obviously a huge deal for me, and the fact that after I finished playing, I’ve been recognised in this way is something I’m very proud of,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I have a really positive association with Milton Keynes, I’ve loved my time here and it’s nice to know I’ve had that impact on other people’s lives too.”<\/p>\n
Lewington was a member of three promotion-winning MK Dons teams, most notably in 2014-15 when they reached the Championship for the first time.<\/p>\n
There were also memorable moments in cup competitions, including winning the EFL Trophy at Wembley in 2008, a 2-0 win over Grimsby, and beating Manchester United 4-0 in the League Cup in 2014.<\/p>\n
“Football motivates me. It’s something that’s in me. My dad’s been in football for 50-plus years, and my brother [is in football] as well, and it’s just something that we do. <\/p>\n
“I wake up in the morning, and normally football is one of my first thoughts, and it’s something that just makes me happy. It’s a life that I know and that I like. It’s just something that comes naturally to me.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lewington retired as club captain at the end of last season, having made an emotional final appearance at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":181503,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-181502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181502\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}