Leon Britton wants Swansea to rediscover their philosophy in the Championship - even if it takes four years to return

Leon Britton thinks for a moment as he considers the question: what he’ll miss most about being a footballer. And in that moment, you can almost see the deluge of emotions and sensations washing through his mind from almost two decades in the professional game. A life that as of Monday morning, he will be giving up for good.

“Coming in from the warm-up,” he says finally. “Putting your shirt on. The last few minutes with the boys. Lots of encouragement. And then walking down the tunnel in front of the fans. Going out on the pitch, never knowing what’s going to happen. The ref blows the whistle, and you start the game. Those moments are so special. That’s what I’ll miss.”

It’s a fair bet that Swansea will miss him just as much. After 16 years, Britton’s departure feels like their very own Brexit, parting with a long-standing institution and stepping into a bleak, uncertain future. Defeat to Stoke on Sunday confirmed their relegation to the Championship, bringing down the curtain on a fairytale rise that saw them go from the bottom of the Football League to the very top tier.

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And Britton has been there for the whole journey (apart from an ill-fated six-month spell at Sheffield United, which he immediately regretted). European football. Wembley finals. Promotion after promotion. “Five foot five but a giant,” was how his former manager Brendan Rodgers described him, and if the diminutive midfielder was a gnome on the field, he was a metronome with the ball at his feet. At one point, he was even hailed as Europe’s most accurate passer, with a completion rate higher even than Xavi’s.

Pass it and move. Keep it on the ground. Fight for every ball. Stay composed. During his 518 games, Britton came to embody the Swansea Way better than anyone else, and so he knows better than anyone else when it has been lost. “Over the last two or three years, we’ve deviated from what got us to the Premier League,” he says. “Being in the Premier League, you just do everything you can to stay in the league, and the football kind of went away.”

Gradually, the passing style cultivated by Roberto Martinez, Brendan Rodgers and Michael Laudrup gave way to… well, it’s hard to say. Managers came and went: four in 19 months. The goals simply dried up. Relegation to the Championship, while painful, offers hope of renewal. Turning the page and starting again. It is why Britton believes that rather than prioritising promotion at the first attempt, Swansea first need to work out what they intend to do with it.

“If it takes two, three or four years to get back to the Premier League, so be it,” he says. “We need to make sure that when we do come up, we’ve got that clear idea of what we want to do. The last two or three years have been tough, just trying to keep our heads above water. We’ve changed a lot of managers, maybe just to get that bounce in results.

“Before that, we always had stability, an idea, a philosophy of the way we played, which served us very well. I wouldn’t want to come straight back up and not have that in place. I would rather, personally, have two, three, four years to get that philosophy and idea back. I think the fans would like to see that back.”

Britton is not the only Swansea stalwart hanging up his boots. Ki Sung-Yueng and Angel Rangel are also leaving, almost 1,000 games of experience walking out the door between the three of them. Yet Britton, at least, will be hanging around: initially as a club ambassador, although ultimately, you feel, he has a much higher calling. After Paul Clement’s sacking earlier this season, Britton - who had already been appointed player-coach - took charge of a couple of games, and the experience has given him a taste for more.

Clement believes he will eventually manage Swansea, and if Carlos Carvalhal does leave the club this summer, any new manager would be wise to tap into Britton’s deep well of knowledge. “We’ll speak about the coaching and review it as we go along,” Britton says. “It’s something that I enjoyed under Paul Clement, but at the moment I’ll do the club ambassador thing.”

The Liberty Stadium on Sunday was a gently seething place, with disappointment at relegation bubbling into anger at the club’s owners. Britton acknowledges that the discontent has affected the atmosphere in the stadium, but is keener to underline the journey the club has been on from the verge of ruin.

“The football club I leave today - even with the disappointment of relegation - is a much stronger place,” he says. “We’ve had so many positive things happen. Obviously this is the first bump in the road, if you like. It wasn’t to be. But I can look back at my career at Swansea with great pride.

“It’s incredible to see where the football club’s gone in 15 years. We were bottom of League Two, playing at the Vetch Field without a training ground. Today, I leave the football club after having seven years in the Premier League. We’ve won our first major trophy in the League Cup. We’ve got a fantastic training ground. It’s been a privilege to be a part of it. And I’m going to take away so many memories.”