A record, a final and then goes: the 2022 World Cup in Qatar will therefore have been the last lap of Hugo Lloris, 145 selections, captain of the France team for more than 10 years, who decided to retire from international football and who is therefore the first French player to do so since the lost World Cup final on December 18.
This is information revealed by the daily L'Équipe, this Monday evening.
"
There comes a time when you have to know how to pass the hand, he explains in an interview with the newspaper.
I don't want to make it my own, I've always said and repeated that the France team doesn't belong to anyone, and we all have to make sure that's the case, me first.
I think that behind, the team is ready to continue.
“The coach Didier Deschamps as well as the staff of the Blues had been warned beforehand of this decision.
This winter in Qatar, where he played in his second consecutive World Cup final after the victorious one in 2018, the player trained in Nice had equaled and then beaten Lilian Thuram's French team selection record (141).
By climbing with the Blues to the final, Lloris had brought his total to 145, a figure that will therefore remain frozen in the history of the Blues.
The one who was 21 years old on his debut after Euro 2008, where he succeeded Grégory Coupet and Steve Mandanda, his eternal number 2 with whom he shared 139 selections, bows out internationally at 36 years old.
Unfortunately, Lloris' last in the Blues jersey will remain a lost final, with three goals conceded and a badly negotiated penalty shootout for the Tottenham goalkeeper.
But in more than 14 years in the rooster tunic, which will have seen him evolve from a promising young goalkeeper to one of the best in recent history, Hugo Lloris will have known everything, from the worst to the best.
In total, Lloris in Blue means four World Cup finals (20 matches, in 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2022), three Euros (2012, 2016, 2021), two trophies won (the 2018 World Cup and the 2021 Nations League), three finals played, 120 goals conceded (0.82 goals per match), 63
clean sheets
(matches without conceding a goal) and more than 130 players played alongside the France team.
The question of his succession, both as goalkeeper and for the captaincy, will necessarily lead the next gathering of the Blues, next March.
Former Parisian Mike Maignan, recent Italian champion with AC Milan, seems to be his designated heir to the post despite an injury which deprived him of the World Cup and continues to bother him.