Less than 24 hours after Lionel Messi announced his international retirement with Argentina, one of Real Madrid’s biggest stars has called time on his own country career, insisting the moment has arrived to make way for the new generation.<\/p>\n
Antonio Rudiger, the Germany and Real Madrid defender, confirmed the news on his official Instagram account. It brings the curtain down on a career that spanned more than 10 years in the Germany shirt.<\/p>\n
“After a period of reflection, I felt that the time had come to end my career with the national team and make way for the new generation,” Rudiger said in his statement.<\/p>\n
He added: “When I wore the Germany national team shirt for the first time in 2014, I did not even imagine in my dreams that I would play 86 international matches.”<\/p>\n
You can discuss topics and news in greater depth on the “Kooora” forums<\/p>\n
Germany claimed no major silverware during his years in the side, and the defender admitted as much. Yet he insisted those years would remain among the most important chapters of his career. “Despite the absence of a major title and suffering some painful defeats, this period will remain an exceptional chapter that will stay with me throughout my life,” he said.<\/p>\n
Rudiger thanked his international team-mates and the technical and administrative staff he worked with, singling out Joachim Low, Hansi Flick and Julian Nagelsmann, alongside his youth national team coach Horst Hrubesch. A special message went to the fans too, praising their backing and above all the atmosphere at Euro 2024 on German soil.<\/p>\n
His statement ended on a forward-looking note: “For me, a new chapter now begins, in which I will focus fully on my career with Real Madrid. Thank you for this shared journey.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Less than 24 hours after Lionel Messi announced his international retirement with Argentina, one of Real Madrid’s biggest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79048,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[4212,865,29772,638,85,82,4240,1139,1487,83,369],"class_list":["post-79047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-madrid","tag-a-ruediger","tag-germany","tag-germany-vs-paraguay","tag-l-messi","tag-laliga","tag-madrid","tag-paraguay","tag-real-betis","tag-real-betis-vs-real-madrid","tag-real-madrid","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}