{"id":469729,"date":"2023-11-15T06:40:42","date_gmt":"2023-11-15T10:40:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/?post_type=news&#038;p=469729"},"modified":"2023-11-15T06:40:42","modified_gmt":"2023-11-15T10:40:42","slug":"alex-song-retires-from-professional-football-aged-36","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/news\/alex-song-retires-from-professional-football-aged-36\/","title":{"rendered":"Alex Song retires from professional football aged 36"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Alex Song has officially announced his retirement from professional football.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">\ud83c\udde8\ud83c\uddf2 Former Arsenal and Bar\u00e7a midfielder Alex Song has officially retired from professional football. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/nHeCLtLKbU\" target=\"_blank\">pic.twitter.com\/nHeCLtLKbU<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/FabrizioRomano\/status\/1724534289491186153?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">November 14, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>The Cameroonian has bagged 49 caps for his country before withdrawing back in 2015.<\/p>\n<p>The 36-year-old had a promising start to his career as he spent 7 years at Arsenal(from 2005 to 2012) before moving to Barcelona, where he won the La Liga title in 2012-13.<\/p>\n<p>Two loan spells at West Ham saw him make a return to the Premier League before a permanent deal with Rubin Kazan. Song would finish his career at AS Arta\/Solar from Djibouti.<\/p>\n<p>The 36-year-old last appearance came back in September and he has now stepped down in order to focus on developing the youth academy of the African club.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It is with great sadness that the time has come for me to hang up my boots,&#8221; Song wrote on Instagram.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;My journey that began in Yaound\u00e9 as a child, playing with no boots, in bare feet and on hard gravel, gave me the strength and courage to succeed.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When I moved to France, playing for Bastia I thought I had achieved a miracle. However, this was only the start as my journey continued to Arsenal and Barcelona, two of the greatest clubs in the world.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alex Song has officially announced his retirement from professional football. \ud83c\udde8\ud83c\uddf2 Former Arsenal and Bar\u00e7a midfielder Alex Song has officially retired from professional [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4224,"featured_media":84795,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false},"tags":[],"news_category":[14235],"gn_keywords":[22075],"acf":{"announce":"The former Arsenal and Barcelona player has called it quits on his career","video":[]},"rank_math_focus_keyword":"","rank_math_description":"","rank_math_title":"","rank_math_robots":"","rank_math_canonical_url":"","rank_math_facebook_title":"","rank_math_facebook_description":"","rank_math_facebook_image":"","rank_math_twitter_title":"","rank_math_twitter_description":"","rank_math_twitter_image":"","rank_math_snippet_shortcode":"","rank_math_primary_category":"","rankmath_seo":{"focus_keyword":"","description":"","title":"","canonical_url":"","robots":"","facebook":{"title":"","description":"","image":""},"twitter":{"title":"","description":"","image":""}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/469729"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=469729"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/469729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":469730,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/469729\/revisions\/469730"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469729"},{"taxonomy":"news_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news_category?post=469729"},{"taxonomy":"gn_keywords","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/gn_keywords?post=469729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}