Champions League, world title, injuries… Raphaël Varane’s career in five key moments

At 31, the defender and former French international announced on Wednesday that he was ending his professional football career.

Retirement came as suddenly as he had begun his brilliant career. Raphaël Varane, an outstanding defender, has won everything in fourteen years, especially at Real Madrid, but also the 2018 World Cup with the French team. The man with 93 caps for the Blues (5 goals) announced on Wednesday, September 25, that he was putting an end to his rich career.

Revealed at Lens, he then enjoyed the glory days of the immense Real Madrid, with whom he played 360 matches and won no fewer than 17 titles, including four Champions Leagues and three Spanish championships. After three seasons in England with Manchester United, Raphaël Varane returned with a final challenge in Italy, with Como, recently promoted to Serie A. But yet another injury, in his first match at the beginning of August, was one too many. Franceinfo: sport looks back at the most significant moments of the player who now has one of the greatest records in French football.

2012: first season at Real Madrid, already a first title

Coveted for months by Florentino Pérez and his advisor Zinedine Zidane, the Lens nugget arrived in Madrid in the summer of 2011 and even became, at only 18 years and two months, the youngest recruit of the emblematic president of Real. Under the orders of José Mourinho, he discovered the very high level, that of a mastodon set to aim for all the trophies.

Benefiting from the rotation set up by the Portuguese coach, Raphaël Varane ended his first season in Spain with 15 matches in all competitions, including his first four appearances in the Champions League. He therefore won his first professional title at the end of this 2011-2012 season, with Real Madrid winning La Liga ahead of their eternal rivals Barcelona.

2014: Happy in the White House, Unhappy in Blue

Two seasons later, and despite several physical problems, particularly with his knee, Raphaël Varane continued his apprenticeship and stood out more and more, both at Real and in the French team, with which he made his first selection in March 2013. Now called up to every gathering of Didier Deschamps’ Blues, he also established himself in the second half of the season as an increasingly serious starter in the Madrid defense. He played the entire Champions League final against Atlético de Madrid, which became legendary thanks to Sergio Ramos’ equalizing goal in added time, showing great serenity for a 20-year-old player.

Above all, and following the victory after extra time of his Real (4-1) which won the famous decima (the 10th title), he became the youngest French player to be titled in the most prestigious of continental competitions. Everything seemed to go well for him since he advanced like a pillar of Deschamps on the occasion of the 2014 World Cup in Germany, his first international competition. The end was however cruel, brutal. Facing the Nationalmannschaft in the quarter-finals, the French defender let go of his marking on a set piece and allowed Mats Hummels to deceive Hugo Lloris. The Blues lost 1-0 and Germany headed towards its fourth world title.

2016: relegated to Real, forfeit for the Euro… The frustrating season

Finally a regular starter (46 matches in all competitions) in 2014-2015, a season without a single trophy, Raphaël Varane hopes to confirm and above all to reconnect with success. Especially since Zinédine Zidane takes over the reins of Real in the middle of winter after the ousting of Rafael Benitez. Finally much less used in La Liga, in favor of Pepe and Sergio Ramos, but unshakeable in the Champions League (he plays 11 matches in a row as a starter until the semi-finals), the Northerner gets injured at the worst possible time, at the beginning of May.

A major injury to the biceps femoris of his left thigh caused him to miss everything: the Champions League final, but also and above all the Euro 2016 at home. If the consecration of his teammates in C1 allowed him to win a second European Cup, Raphaël Varane experienced, with the Blues, a second great disappointment after that of 2014. “It hurts, it hurts a lot, not to be by your side” wrote the French vice-captain in a letter addressed to his teammates in the French team who, in his absence, would fail in the final against Portugal with a Laurent Koscielny-Samuel Umtiti hinge.

2018: historic with the Merengues and on top of the world with the Blues

The moment of glory, and it is total. 2018 marks the peak of Raphaël Varane’s career. Firstly because he is now one of the leaders of the great Real Madrid, with whom he signs a historic treble in the Champions League (after the 2016 and 2017 titles). But also and above all because he definitively enters the pantheon of French football. Still as the leader of the French defense, at 25, Raphaël Varane wins the second title of the Blues in the World Cup in Russia.

At the end of an extraordinary epic, during which he also showed the way by opening the scoring in the quarter-finals against Uruguay (2-0), his Blues went to the end of their dream and, like their illustrious elders in 1998, capsized all of France. On the roof of the world and now considered one of the best defenders on the planet, Raphaël Varane finished in seventh place in the Ballon d’Or rankings.

2022: Argentina, a cruel end for the leader of the French defense

Terrible 93rd and last selection with the French team. Like his teammates, Raphaël Varane is dejected, in tears, collapsed on the pitch of the Lusail stadium (Qatar), at the end of a World Cup final that has become legendary. By losing at the end of a frustrating penalty shootout (3-3, 4-2 on penalties) against the Argentinians of Lionel Messi and Emiliano Martinez, and after an epic encounter, Didier Deschamps’ Blues were unable to retain their title.

It’s hard to end his French adventure in a worse way for the ex-Merengue, who joined Manchester United in 2021, replaced at the end of extra time (113th), on the verge of fainting. As a good leader of the Blues, Raphaël Varane had, as throughout his career, given his all on the pitch, probably too much for an increasingly tested body. Insufficient, however, to fill one of the greatest records in French football with a historic double in the World Cup.