And there was a footballing fairytale to follow. Signing for his home city club Royal Antwerp in 2022, Toby won the Belgian Cup in April 2023 and then, at the end of his first season, scored a 94th-minute equaliser to secure the club’s first title for 66 years. The team then reached the group stage of the UEFA Champions League for the first time the following season, 2023\/24.<\/p>\n
After winning 127 caps – in the top five all-time caps for De Rode Duivels, a list topped by Jan’s 157 – and appearing in three World Cups, winning bronze in 2018, Toby announced his international retirement in 2023. At the end of last season, 2024\/25, after 635 career appearances for Ajax, Southampton, Atletico Madrid, Al-Duhail and Royal Antwerp, Toby announced his retirement.<\/p>\n
Speaking to us on his departure back in 2021, Toby reflected on his time in Lilywhite. \u201cWe conceded 26 goals in 2016\/17, the best in the Club\u2019s history, so maybe when I finish my career, I\u2019ll look back at that as a very special time,\u201d he reflected. \u201cI was part of it as we wrote our names in Club history, great days.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve only good memories. There are not a lot of players who stay at a club for six years now. I\u2019m always very loyal, always happy to play. I never talk about myself, but maybe now is the moment… I always did my best, and I hope people see that every time I stepped onto the pitch, I gave 100 per cent for the shirt.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always wanted to be part of the Club\u2019s history and the Club will be with me forever.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"And there was a footballing fairytale to follow. Signing for his home city club Royal Antwerp in 2022,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":479344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-479343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}