Axel Allag, Media365, published on Wednesday October 16, 2024 at 9:01 a.m.
Three weeks after hanging up his boots, Raphaël Varane warned of the too many meetings in today’s football. A problem which led to his international retirement with the Blues.
On July 11, Raphaël Varane knew his football career was over. Victim of a sprained left knee with Como, he knew he had to say stop to high-level football. “It is through him that I found balance in the imbalance. So, if my left knee tells me it’s fed up, I have to listen to it. Since the age of 20, I have played with a sword of Damocles above my right knee. Managing pressure, knowing my body, knowing when to push the machine, I master it perfectly. But over the last three years, I have only injured my left. The right knee had become strong, but less mobile, and the left knee did everything, for power, starts, impulses. Physically, this injury put me back in a spiral, and the balance between sacrifices and pleasure was no longer balanced,” admitted the 2018 world champion this Wednesday in an interview with L’Equipe.
Varane put his career on the line in the play-off against Ukraine with the Blues
Shaken by “the loss of bearings” due to the lack of pitches, the former central defender of Manchester United and the Blues recalled good memories with in mind, of course, the coronation in Russia under the direction of Didier Deschamps. “Just before the World Cup, there were a few meetings with the coach and it was heated. But I liked the moments when it was difficult, the moments where we see on the pitch who is going to ask for the ball in feet and for whom the ball will burn”, he recalled, he who should not have “played” the return play-off against Ukraine for the 2014 World Cup (3-0), the fault of a knee too capricious. “That day, I clearly put my career on the line. France needs me, the coach needs me, I have to play, and I take the risk. We remove the liquid, we put an anesthetic, I’m 20 years old, and I say to myself, too bad. I was perfectly aware of this. But I have no regrets. For France, I will always do it again.”
“Everything is robotic” in today’s football
Announcing his integration into the Como development committee, he warned of the dangers of too many meetings. “When I talk about mental health, it’s not to play less, for me, it’s because football is in overdrive and the machine is going to break down,” he warned, he who has never not afraid of failure in the face of a new world but who regretted, like many observers, the reality of current football. “Everything is robotic, there are patterns of play that make it difficult to shake up a team block. There is much less freedom. Ancelotti leaves a lot, but the new generation of coaches leaves less. Football should remain a game of mistakes, and it is much less so“.
