Barcelona and Spain midfielder Xavi Hernandez has announced his retirement from international football.<\/p>\n
The 34-year-old won the World Cup and two European Championships with his country.<\/p>\n
He was capped 133 times, more than any other Spanish outfield player, and scored 13 goals.<\/p>\n
Xavi told a news conference in Barcelona on Tuesday: “I’m grateful for all those years. It has been a fantastic time.”<\/p>\n
He made his full Spain debut on 15 November 2000, aged 20, against the Netherlands.<\/p>\n
“I’m not 20 anymore, but I still have the motivation of a kid,” he said.<\/p>\n
He was voted player of the tournament at the 2008 European Championships as Spain ended a 44-year wait for a major international trophy and began a period of domination on the world stage.<\/p>\n
Spain started the 2014 World Cup in Brazil as one of the favourites, but were dumped out of the tournament in the group stages after a 5-1 humiliation at the hands of the Netherlands and a 2-0 loss to Chile.<\/p>\n
Xavi said: “I was going to retire after Euro 2012 but head coach Vicente Del Bosque persuaded me to stay on and go to Brazil, which was of course a huge disappointment for everyone and myself individually.<\/p>\n
“After Euro 2012, it was generally understood I was going to be leaving after Brazil 2014. I hope Del Bosque stays as manager of Spain because I don’t think there is a better man for the job.<\/p>\n
“I want to thank everyone involved in that team for the way they treated me and the respect, and I could not wish for a better time as an international.”<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC Sport<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Barcelona and Spain midfielder Xavi Hernandez has announced his retirement from international football. The 34-year-old won the World Cup and two European Championships with his country. He was capped 133 times, more than any other Spanish outfield player, and scored 13 goals. Xavi told a news conference in Barcelona on Tuesday: “I’m grateful for all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":37070,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[29,726,3,1946],"class_list":["post-37060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-dr-mahamudu-bawumia","tag-george-weah","tag-ghana-news","tag-northern-youth-for-peace-and-development"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}