{"id":19252,"date":"2025-09-16T00:04:04","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T00:04:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=19252"},"modified":"2025-09-16T00:04:04","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T00:04:04","slug":"ex-france-defender-umtiti-calls-time-on-club-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=19252","title":{"rendered":"Ex-France defender Umtiti calls time on club career"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Former France international defender Samuel Umtiti, a World Cup winner in 2018, announced his retirement on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>The 31-year-old former Barcelona and Lyon player left Ligue 1 club Lille at the end of last season.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;After an intense career with ups and downs, the time has come to say goodbye&#8230; I gave EVERYTHING with passion and I regret NOTHING,&#8221;\u00a0 Umtiti, whose career had been plagued by injury, said in a post on Instagram.<\/p>\n<p>Born in Cameroon, Umtiti moved to France as a child living with his family in the\u00a0 Lyon where he began his professional career.<\/p>\n<p>Umtiti moved to Barcelona in 2016 winning two La Liga titles and three Copa del Rey trophies during his seven years in Spain.<\/p>\n<p>The centre-back was one of the architects of France&#8217;s 2018 World Cup title, scoring the only goal in the semi-final against Belgium.<\/p>\n<p>He becomes the fifth World Cup winner in Russia to retire, after Raphael Varane, Blaise Matuidi, Adil Rami, and Steve Mandanda.<\/p>\n<p>Umtiti signed for Lille in January 2024 after a loan spell in Italy with Lecce but played very few matches due to repeated injuries and knee surgery.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former France international defender Samuel Umtiti, a World Cup winner in 2018, announced his retirement on Monday. The 31-year-old former Barcelona and Lyon player left Ligue 1 club Lille at the end of last season. &#8220;After an intense career with ups and downs, the time has come to say goodbye&#8230; I gave EVERYTHING with passion [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19252\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}