NOS Football•
Toby Alderweireld will end his football career after the current season. The Royal Antwerp player, who was under contract with Ajax from 2004 to 2013, announced this in the Belgian TV program Gert’s table.
“Purely to spend more time with my children,” the 35-year-old defender explained. “Physically I can still handle it and I will certainly miss football, but I also want to be there for them at the weekend.”
This season, Alderweireld only missed one match for Royal Antwerp, while in January 2024 he received the Golden Boot as the best player in the Belgian competition.
At a young age, Alderweireld from Antwerp left for Amsterdam to join the youth academy of Ajax. There he broke through into the first team in 2008, where he would play at center back for several years alongside friend and compatriot Jan Vertonghen.
Short spells at Atlético Madrid, where he played in a Champions League final, and Southampton eventually brought Alderweireld to Tottenham Hotspur. There he was reunited with Vertonghen and also played a Champions League final, which he would lose, just like at Atlético.
Are finest hour Alderweireld experienced in June 2023. He shot his childhood sweetheart Royal Antwerp, where he had returned at the beginning of that season, with a great goal to the club’s first national title since 1957. Mark van Bommel was his trainer at the time.
Alderweireld thought he was dying: ‘I will soon never see my children again’
In recent years, Alderweireld has suffered from panic attacks, it was revealed on Monday. That made him decide to say goodbye to the Belgian national team, for which he played 127 times. Only Vertonghen (157) and Axel Witsel (132) played more often for the Red Devils.
