Ex-Liverpool keeper
©IMAGO
Long-time Liverpool and Belgian national goalkeeper Simon Mignolet is ending his career at the end of the season at the age of 38. The Club Bruges professional wrote on Instagram that the next ten games of the Champions’ Playoffs of the Jupiler Pro League will be the last “of my active football career”. Mignolet, Nicolò Tresoldi (21) and Co. are currently playing in second place behind defending champions Union Saint-Gilloise for the championship in Belgium.
“This is not the moment for detailed thanks or emotional reviews. Not because they are not there, on the contrary. There are still ten important games for us, with a clear goal: become champions and get the second star,” said Mignolet – Bruges currently has 19 titles. He doesn’t have the final result of this season in his own hands, but promised the club and the fans: “My commitment, my willpower and my determination will be there every day until my very last moment at Club Brugge.”
Mignolet returned to his home country in 2019 after six years at Anfield. Since then, he has kept his box clean 115 times in 309 games for Bruges, won the championship four times, the cup once and the Belgian Super Cup three times. It is the club for which he appeared on the field most often in his career. For Liverpool, where he won the Champions League as a substitute keeper in 2019, Mignolet made 204 appearances. There are also 106 for his youth club VV St. Truiden, which is also one of the championship candidates in Belgium, 101 for AFC Sunderland and 35 for the Belgian national team.
Mignolet reached its highest market value in Liverpool in 2014 at 14 million euros. The Reds also paid Sunderland the highest transfer fee of his career, €10.6 million, in 2013; his total transfer proceeds are €20.1 million. With Belgium, where he was mostly in the shadow of Thibaut Courtois (33, Real Madrid), the keeper took part in the 2014, 2018 (where the team won the bronze medal) and 2022 World Championships as well as the 2016 and 2021 European Championships.
