The goalkeeper of the French team Vincent Gérard announced that he would retire at the end of the season, at the age of 37, that is to say after the Paris Olympic Games, which he hopes to be able to compete in. In an interview published Wednesday by the newspaper l’Equipe, and by the Moselle TV channel, in Metz, the emblematic goalkeeper of the Blues, who has 150 caps, announced that “this season would be the last”. “I don’t know when it will stop, I hope as soon as possible, it’s not all up to me. I won’t do it again.”
The Kiel player, injured since the start of the season, was called by coach Guillaume Gille to take part in a preparation course for the Euro which will take place in Germany in January.
“Too many things prevent me from having fun”
Asked about the reasons which pushed him to stop, Vincent Gerard clarified that the time would come “when the negative sides outweighed the positives”. “Too many things bother me, prevent me from having fun. These are the coaches’ instructions that I don’t understand, the orders that I don’t necessarily want to follow. All the extras,” he listed. “I understand people who still want to make these efforts (…), now I no longer want to,” he said, even if “it’s never easy to close twenty years of your life,” according to him.
The native of Moselle spent a large part of his career at Dunkirk, Montpellier and Paris Saint-Germain. He notably won the Champions League in 2018 with Montpellier and was crowned champion of France five times (2008 with Montpellier, 2014 with Dunkirk, 2020, 2021 and 2022 with PSG). With the Blues, he was crowned Olympic champion in 2021 in Tokyo, and silver medalist in 2016 in Rio. He is also world champion in 2017 and European champion in 2014, the last year in which the Blues won the continental title.
Asked about his desire to end with participation in the Paris Games, Vincent Gérard preferred to procrastinate: “If I say that now, it is not to ask for a blank check, to say “I have to go to the Olympics” . I will do my best, as I have always done,” added the Kiel goalkeeper.