{"id":2957,"date":"2024-08-08T18:16:20","date_gmt":"2024-08-08T18:16:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/pepe-real-madrid-legend-and-portugal-defender-retires-at-age-41\/"},"modified":"2024-08-08T18:16:20","modified_gmt":"2024-08-08T18:16:20","slug":"pepe-real-madrid-legend-and-portugal-defender-retires-at-age-41","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/pepe-real-madrid-legend-and-portugal-defender-retires-at-age-41\/","title":{"rendered":"Pepe: Real Madrid legend and Portugal defender retires at age 41"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Portugal defender Pepe has announced his retirement from football, ending one of the most highly decorated careers of recent times.<\/b><\/p>\n

Pepe, 41, became the oldest player to appear at a European Championship finals this summer, and his last match was Portugal’s penalty shootout defeat by France in the quarter-finals.<\/p>\n

The former Real Madrid centre-back made 141 appearances for his country – only Cristiano Ronaldo and Joao Moutinho have more Portugal caps – while he also played for Porto, Besiktas and Maritimo.<\/p>\n

An emotional Pepe thanked those who have helped him throughout his career in a 33-minute video posted online, external<\/span><\/a> on Thursday.<\/p>\n

He won Euro 2016 with Portugal and also helped to secure three Champions League and three La Liga titles during his 10-year spell in Madrid.<\/p>\n

Pepe said: “I can’t help but thank all the presidents who bet and believed in me to be able to perform my work.<\/p>\n

“To all the employees of all the clubs I’ve been to, who are the soul and essence of the clubs and the national team. And I want to thank everyone in the background. I want to leave a thank-you and a hug of gratitude for all of you.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Portugal defender Pepe has announced his retirement from football, ending one of the most highly decorated careers of recent times. Pepe, 41, became the oldest player to appear at a European Championship finals this summer, and his last match was Portugal’s penalty shootout defeat by France in the quarter-finals. The former Real Madrid centre-back made […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2958,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-european-football","category-world-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2957"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2959,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2957\/revisions\/2959"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}