Xavi hangs up his boots for Spain
Print Edition
SPAIN midfielder Xavi Hernandez yesterday announced the end of a dazzling international career at the age of 34.
The Barcelona player represented his country 133 times, a record for an outfield player and only bettered by goalkeeper and captain Iker Casillas, and was a key figure in Spain’s glittering run when it won the 2010 World Cup and the 2008 and 2012 European Championships.
“I have decided to leave the national team. I think my time there has finished,” Xavi said yesterday. “It has been a wonderful, fantastic period for me. It has been an honor.”
The player revealed that he had planned to leave the national side after Spain’s Euro 2012 triumph in Ukraine, but coach Vicente del Bosque convinced him to stay.
“The fact that I did not take part in the decisive game against Chile was a personal disappointment,” said Xavi of the match that Spain lost 0-2 in Rio de Janeiro in June.
Xavi only played in the first game of Spain’s World Cup campaign in Brazil, a humiliating 1-5 loss to the Netherlands.
Xavi said he had considered leaving Barcelona, too, after a disappointing 2013-14 season.
“I had two major collective and personal disappointments, perhaps the worst of my career on a personal level,” he said. “I found myself on the bench for the last game of the league season, which had not happened to me in recent years in the national team either, and I decided to tell the club that the best thing would be to say that it is over now,” Xavi said. But Barcelona’s new coach Luis Enrique and sporting director Andoni Zubizarreta “convinced me I can still be competitive and useful to the club,” he said.
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