Raphaël Varane after retiring from the national football team: "At the moment I have the feeling of suffocating"

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Raphaël Varane will no longer play for France

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Mike Egerton / dpa

French defender Raphaël Varane has criticized the busy schedule of professional football and thus justified his retirement from the national team.

"Football at the highest level is like a washing machine, you play all the time and never stop," Varane told French television channel Canal Plus, "at the moment I feel like I'm suffocating."

A few days earlier, the 29-year-old had announced on social media that he would no longer play for the Equipe Tricolore.

According to a report by players' union Fifpro, Varane has played 2,136 minutes this season alone.

Just nine days elapsed between the World Cup final, in which Varane played 112 minutes, and Manchester United's first appearance in the Premier League.

“The gambler devours the human.

I am there without being there,' added Varane.

The costs are too high.

Varane has won 93 caps for France in ten years.

He became world champion in 2018, and at the finals in Qatar at the end of last year he narrowly missed winning the title again on penalties in the final against Argentina.

The defender also won the Champions League four times with Real Madrid and has been playing for Manchester United since 2021.

Varane wants to continue his club career.

Soccer players complain again and again about the high stress.

Real goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois felt like he was being treated like a “robot” by Uefa and Fifa in 2021.

At the time, the German international Ilkay Gündogan criticized the possible reforms in the Champions League and wrote on Twitter: "More and more and more games, isn't anyone thinking about us players?".

The players' union Fifpro has now repeated its criticism of the schedules in a report by Deutsche Welle.

Secretary General Jonas Baer-Hoffmann said: "Today's amount of games puts too much strain on the mental and physical well-being of the players."

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