Varane sounds the alarm

Three weeks after announcing his retirement, Raphaël Varane spoke at length to the newspaper The Team this Wednesday. The former defender of the France team (93 caps) suffered a left knee sprain last July. One injury too many. “The left knee has compensated for the right knee since 2013”reveals Varane, aged 31, who says he has “played with a sword of Damocles above my right knee” his entire career.

“We (footballers) don’t put our lives on the line like gladiators, but we stake our physical integrity, and that’s part of who we are”shares the one who signed for the Italian club Como this summer, where he only played one official match before calling it quits. Too many matches, too much intensity and too little time to recharge. “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”warns Varane, witness to a sport where there is “much less creativity” and where “everything is robotic”.

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The “shenanigans” on the extra-sporting side

World champion with the Blues in 2018, Varane retired internationally at the end of the 2022 World Cup, at the age of 29, because of this exhaustion. He also deplores the difficulty of going from an average young boy to an international star and millionaire in a very short time without being prepared, with the famous “entourage” evolving at full speed.

“When you have a little experience, you see the tricks, and then you have the choice to accept being fooled, and you sign for your peace of mind: do your shenanigans, I concentrate on my family and on the game Or you don’t agree, and it takes a lot of energy.”explains the player trained in Lens, who summarizes as follows: “The whole system is built so that the player does not think, and does not see that he is being fooled.”