‘I am passionate about this club’: Dan Burn’s Newcastle United homecoming has been 19 years in the making

NEWCASTLE: From stacking shelves in a supermarket and non-league football to gracing the turf at St. James’ Park in the famous black and white, Dan Burn’s road back to Newcastle United has been a long one.

Now the 29-year-old is determined to show he is the man to fix the Magpies’ defensive woes.

Northumberland-born Burn, a $17.5 million transfer deadline day signing from Brighton and Hove Albion, was released by his boyhood club at the age of 10 when he was a youngster at the Newcastle academy.

A much-traveled career then took him from Blyth Spartans and New Hartley to Darlington, then Fulham and, finally, the Premier League with the Seagulls.

Newcastle manager Eddie Howe is hoping the towering center-half can add steel and athleticism to what is the second-worst Premier League defense this season.

“It was tough. I think when you’re a kid you’re maybe a little naive and you think that when you get around the setup, you are going to play for Newcastle forever,” said Burn, discussing his release from Newcastle United almost two decades ago.

“It definitely knocked me. But, to be fair to Newcastle, I don’t think I was very good at the time. I’ll give them that,” he said.

“What it did do is make me want to prove people wrong. I have fed off things like that my whole career.”

It feels like a lifetime ago that Newcastle United were rubbing shoulders with Europe’s elite. Well, it is for many.

The Magpies have qualified for Europe’s premier football competition, the Champions League, on three occasions, most recently in 2003.

Burn, a former NUFC season ticket holder, remembers those famous nights on Tyneside as if they were yesterday.

“I started playing football because I was watching Newcastle,” he said.

“I was a