Marcos Llorente has announced his retirement from international football, a little over a month after winning the FIFA World Cup with Spain.<\/p>\n
The 31-year-old Llorente, who plays club football for Atletico Madrid, was an unused substitute during Spain\u2019s 1-0 victory over Argentina in extra-time in the final in East Rutherford on July 19.<\/p>\n
He made appearances in group-stage games against Cape Verde and Uruguary, and also came on as a substitute during Luis de la Fuente\u2019s side\u2019s 2-0 win over France in the semifinals.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter much deliberation, I\u2019ve decided to retire from the National Team. I\u2019m aware that I\u2019m still young and maybe if I kept doing things right, I\u2019d still have years to keep playing in this shirt. I know many of you won\u2019t understand and I certainly wouldn\u2019t have understood from the outside either. But it\u2019s a personal decision, very thoughtful and, above all, very heartfelt,\u201d said Llorente in a post on Instagram on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Llorente made his Spain debut in 2020 and went on to represent the country 27 times. He was a member of the side in the European Championships in 2021 and the World Cup in 2022.<\/p>\n
The Spaniard revealed that he had made the decision to retire from international football irrespective of his involvement in this summer\u2019s World Cup campaign.<\/p>\n
\u201cRegardless of whether I had gone to the World Cup or not, or whether we had won or not, this decision was already made. I can only be infinitely grateful to all the people I have crossed paths with during these years who have made it possible for me and my family to live unique and unforgettable moments,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll take everything lived, but especially these last 52 days. With a wonderful group who fought until the end to leave Spain on top. It has been an honor to represent my country and be part of this history.\u201d<\/p>\n
Published on Sep 03, 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Marcos Llorente has announced his retirement from international football, a little over a month after winning the FIFA…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80302,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[30123,30124,2900,30126,30122,30127,30125,30128,17],"class_list":["post-80301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-llorente-international-retirement","tag-llorente-spain-retirement","tag-marcos-llorente","tag-marcos-llorente-international-retirement","tag-marcos-llorente-retirement","tag-marcos-llorente-retirement-post","tag-marcos-llorente-retires","tag-marcos-llorente-spain-retirement","tag-spain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80301","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=80301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}