Tottenham favourite Jan Vertonghen is considering retirement at the end of the season, once he’s done with the European Championships with Belgium.
Het Laatste Nieuws have an interview with the former Tottenham man today as he considers hanging up his boots at Anderlecht.
Vertonghen is currently in his second season with the Belgian giants after joining them on a free transfer from Benfica in September 2022.
They are very much the last club in a varied career to date that has also seen him play for Ajax for the majority of his early career before his eight year spell at Tottenham following a €12.5m move in 2012.
He left them for Benfica in 2020 before returning to his homeland with Anderlecht in 2022, where he has been a regular ever since despite his advancing years.
Now 36-years-old, he’s very much in the latter stages of his career but is showing no signs of slowing down, with him still a regular at club level and for Domenico Tedesco’s Belgium side.
Indeed, he is likely to be one of the starting players for them at Euro 2024 and he insists any decision about his future will be made after that point.
“I will make that decision after the European Championship,” he said about his future.
“My time with the national team will be shorter, but a large part of my football heart lies with the Red Devils.
“I come here every morning with a smile. It has been at least five years, since my penultimate season at Tottenham, that I felt so good about myself.
“The most important question for me is: can I give Anderlecht the player that I want to be, and that Anderlecht deserves? I don’t want to become a caricature of myself. As I feel now, I would like to continue, but I cannot predict how I will feel about it.
“I don’t want to give Anderlecht my yes now and then find out after the European Championship that it won’t work anymore. But the opposite is also true.”
In the meantime, the focus for Vertonghen and Anderlecht is on the end of the season and the play-off rounds now the regular season is over.
They are in the Championship round alongside Union SG, Antwerp, Club Brugge, Cercle Brugge and Genk after finishing second in the table behind Union over 30 games.
Those clubs are all dreaming of glory and Vertonghen admits he watched former Tottenham teammate Toby Alderweireld lifting the trophy and the Belgian Golden Shoe and fancies that himself.
“I’m not working on that yet. Toby’s story is of course beautiful,” he added.
“A boy from Ekeren, near Antwerp, champion with Antwerp. He dared to take the step and it turned out fantastic. The double and the Golden Shoe.”
