{"id":819678,"date":"2026-07-23T23:34:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T23:34:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/819678\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T23:34:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T23:34:14","slug":"argentina-defender-otamendi-retires-from-international-football","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/819678\/","title":{"rendered":"Argentina defender Otamendi retires from international football"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text-primary font-tertiary-body-baseline-regular\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">July 23 &#8211; Argentina defender Nicolas Otamendi announced his retirement from international football on Thursday, bringing the curtain down on a 17-year career during which he won the 2022 World Cup and two Copa America titles.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text-primary font-tertiary-body-baseline-regular\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">The 38-year-old centre back made 139 appearances for his country and was part of the squad that reached this year&#8217;s World Cup final in the United States, in which the defending champions were beaten 1-0 by Spain.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text-primary font-tertiary-body-baseline-regular\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">&#8220;Today I have to write the most difficult words of my career,&#8221; Otamendi posted on Instagram. &#8220;As fate would have it, my last match was a World Cup final. It wasn&#8217;t the result we wanted, but I&#8217;m leaving with my head held high, knowing that this team gave it their all right up to the very last second.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text-primary font-tertiary-body-baseline-regular\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">&#8220;Thank you, Argentina, for allowing me to fulfil the dream of becoming a world champion.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"text-primary font-tertiary-body-baseline-regular\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">Otamendi recently joined Argentine giants River Plate after ending a successful 16-year spell in Europe, where he played for Porto, Valencia, Manchester City and Benfica.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text-primary font-tertiary-body-baseline-regular\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">He represented his country at four World Cups. REUTERS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"July 23 &#8211; Argentina defender Nicolas Otamendi announced his retirement from international football on Thursday, bringing the curtain&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":819679,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-819678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=819678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819678\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/819679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=819678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=819678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=819678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}