World Cup winner Marcos Llorente retired from Spain’s team on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The 31-year-old right back, who has won 27 caps, said on Instagram that it was a “very carefully considered” personal decision.<\/p>\n
The post came accompanied by a photo of him holding the trophy he helped Spain win in July. The Atletico Madrid player said he had already made up his mind before the World Cup.<\/p>\n
“I am aware that I am still young and that, perhaps, if I continued to do things well, I still had years left to play in this jersey,” Llorente said. “I know that many of you won\u2019t understand, and I probably wouldn\u2019t have understood it from the outside either. But it is a personal decision, very carefully considered and, above all, deeply felt.<\/p>\n
“I can only be eternally grateful to all the people I have met during these years who have made it possible for my family and me to experience unique and unforgettable moments. I will cherish everything I have experienced, but above all, these last 52 days. With a wonderful group that fought until the very end to put Spain on top. And they did.”<\/p>\n
Llorente’s first appeared for Spain in 2020. He also made the squad for the 2022 World Cup, but was not in the team that won the 2024 European Championship.<\/p>\n
“It has been an honor to represent my country and be a part of this history,” he said.<\/p>\n
Reporting by The Associated Press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World Cup winner Marcos Llorente retired from Spain’s team on Thursday. The 31-year-old right back, who has won…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80307,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[179,5852,2900,17],"class_list":["post-80306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-atletico-madrid","tag-fifa-mens-world-cup","tag-marcos-llorente","tag-spain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80306","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=80306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}