23, December 2022
Football: French World Cup winner Matuidi retires 0
Blaise Matuidi, a World Cup winner with France in 2018, said on Friday he is retiring, a year after he last played.
The 35-year-old, who started the World Cup final win over Croatia in Russia four years ago, had been omitted from Inter Miami’s squad for this season.
Midfielder Matuidi won Ligue 1 with Paris Saint-Germain and Serie A with Juventus after spending time with Saint-Etienne and Toulouse.
He made 84 international appearances, scoring nine times before his final Les Bleus game in 2019.
“I’ve decided to end my career as a professional footballer,” he said in a video on YouTube.
“I had the chance to play for the biggest European clubs, wear the France shirt, give my family a buzz, live my passion and they are images that will stay with me,” he added.
He is the first member of France’s 2018 squad to retire.
“My head, my heart, tell me to stop and to think about those close to me, my wife, my children, and this life I built,” he said.
“I think I’ve come to the end of what I’m able to bring to the table.”
Matuidi was present last Sunday as France lost in the final of this year’s World Cup to Argentina in Qatar.
Source: AFP
25, December 2022
Football: Fabian O’Neill dead at 49 0
Former Uruguay international midfielder Fabian O’Neill, once hailed by Zinedine Zidane as “the most talented player” he’d ever seen, died Sunday after a long battle with alcoholism. He was 49.
“Goodbye Wizard,” tweeted O’Neill’s formative club Nacional after he passed away due to chronic cirrhosis in a Montevideo hospital where he had been rushed on Saturday suffering from a hemorrhage.
“The most talented player I’ve ever seen,” was how French World Cup winner Zidane, a teammate at Juventus, described O’Neill.
After making his debut for Nacional at the age of 18 in 1992, O’Neill was transferred to Cagliari in Italy three years later.
In 2000, he moved to Juventus but after playing for the Turin giants for just one season, he was farmed out to Perugia.
He then returned to Nacional before quitting in 2003.
O’Neill earned 19 caps for Uruguay and scored two goals.
He was part of the squad that was eliminated in the first round of the World Cup in South Korea and Japan in 2002 although he did not feature in any of the group games due to injury.
“Uruguayan football is in mourning. One of the best players to emerge in recent decades and who knew how to shine on the field with his talent and magic has left us,” wrote the El Pais newspaper.
El Observador said that “Fabian O’Neill was one of those great talents wasted…. his career was marked by alcohol and excesses.”
Source: AFP