Alan Shearer scored 260 Premier League goals and turned down Manchester United for home
At 17, Alan Shearer marked his full debut with a hat-trick against Arsenal, beating a record Jimmy Greaves had held for 30 years. He went on to score 260 Premier League goals, still the league's highest tally, and in 1996 chose his boyhood club Newcastle for a world-record fee.
Shearer grew up in Gosforth, Newcastle, son of a sheet-metal worker who pushed him towards football. He started out in midfield because it kept him involved, captained his school side, and played for the amateur Wallsend Boys Club, where Southampton scout Jack Hixon spotted him. Summers training with the Saints youth team were, he later said, the making of him, and in April 1986 he signed a youth contract despite successful trials at other clubs, Newcastle among them.
His first senior appearance came as a substitute at Chelsea on 26 March 1988. Two weeks later, in his first start at The Dell, he scored three in a 4–2 win over Arsenal, becoming the youngest top-flight hat-trick scorer at 17 years and 240 days. Progress was gradual after that, but his strength in holding the ball won over supporters, who named him their Player of the Year for 1991. That summer he hit seven goals in four games for England's under-21 side at the Toulon Tournament, and a senior call-up, with a goal on debut, soon followed.
In 1992 he moved to Blackburn Rovers and became one of Europe's deadliest finishers, winning the Premier League in 1994–95. In the summer of 1996 Newcastle paid a then world record 15 million pounds, and he promptly claimed a third straight Golden Boot. He captained the club in the 1999 FA Cup final and became its all-time leading scorer before retiring in 2006. That year he finished third for both the Ballon d'Or and FIFA World Player of the Year.
For England he won 63 caps and scored 30 times, taking the Golden Boot at Euro 96 and later captaining the side at the 1998 World Cup and Euro 2000. Since hanging up his boots he has worked as a BBC pundit, apart from an unsuccessful eight-game stint in 2009 trying to keep Newcastle up. In 2021 he was among the first two inductees into the Premier League Hall of Fame.
Source: Alan Shearer
