World champion with the French team, Blaise Matuidi retires

The last time we saw him, he was dressed to the nines in the locker room of the Blues on the side of Qatar, after France – Morocco. Just over a week later, Blaise Matuidi announced on Twitter that he was putting his cleats away. At 35, the midfielder has put the arrow. He is the first 2018 world champion to end his career. Matuidi had not played for over a year with Inter Miami, the last club of his career.

From Matuidi, he will remain the image of a soldier and a player in the service of the collective. And what better way to sum up his career than the Russian campaign in 2018? For the building to withstand the shock, Didier Deschamps had made his usually defensive midfielder the boss of the left lane, in a position which should have gone to others, more armed on the offensive level. Matuidi had seized the position and had given thickness to this asymmetrical 4-2-3-1. Until the happiness you know.

Blaise Matuidi will have known the summit of July 15 in Moscow starting from the bottom, from Troyes. It was in the Aube that this funny left-hander, with a somewhat lanky appearance, stood out. A tireless worker, sometimes capable of brilliant strokes, he went to Saint-Etienne and then became one of the pioneers of PSG de QSI. Recruited in the summer of the change of ownership and era, the native of Toulouse has made his mark.

The gap between his style and his slaughter

In the meantime, Laurent Blanc had launched him in the France team. Called to Norway during the first match of the coach in August, that of the banished, he had not played. But the “President” had offered him the first of his 84 capes in Bosnia and Herzegovina the following month.

Gradually, Matuidi took place in the group, until being selected for Euro 2012 but, injured, will play no role. It was with Didier Deschamps that he finally earned his stripes as boss, becoming indispensable in Russia, two years after being a finalist for Euro 2016. To his credit, Matuidi will have scored 9 goals with the Blues, including an improbable recovery against the Netherlands (2-0) in March 2014, an evening when Antoine Griezmann launched his international career.

At PSG, he has long “suffered” from a gap between his raw style and the flashy ambitions of the capital club. Nevertheless, his six full seasons have left an unforgettable memory at the Parc des Princes. It was when he joined Juventus, a year before the World Cup, that Paris really came into their own. Juve had no complaints about him for three years. To try it was to adopt it. All over. And always.