Recently retired South African legend Janine Van Wyk shared insight how her retirement from the women’s game came about and how she wanted to continue playing, like Portugal legend Cristiano Ronaldo.
Van Wyk broke the African record of the most caps at both the men and women’s game when she surpassed Egyptian Ahmed Hassan’s achievement of 184 appearances that stood for 11 years.
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Midfield ace, Van Wyk featured for just five minutes in Banyana Banyana’s second-leg Africa Women’s Cup of Nations qualifier against Burkina Faso and became the overall highest capped player on the continent.
However, the way her retirement came about, wasn't to her total satisfaction. At the age of 36, Van Wyk harboured ambitions to continue playing football, like Ronaldo does in Saudi Arabia now.
“You look at Ronaldo, he is 40-years-old. He is not the player he used to be when he was at Manchester United or Real Madrid but he is a fantastic athlete in his own way,” Van Wyk told Marawa Sports Worldwide, though, Ronaldo is actually 38-years-old.
“People are already talking about him retiring because of his age so people have that stigma that when you reach a certain age, especially the age of 30 it’s time to retire,” she added.
Van Wyk claims how there were instructions from members within the technical team of Banyana on how to manage her body and the kind of exercises she should be doing, which led her to think of retirement prematurely.
“Yes, there’s some people within the technical team that would say ‘we need to manage your body properly’. You can’t be doing this exercise you need to be doing this exercise.
“It kills you as a player because you get told these things you automatically think like they’re actually right. I should be thinking about retirement, I should be thinking about not doing that exercise, I should be thinking…then you start hiding injuries because you don’t want people to say your time is up,” Van Wyk said.
“But it’s very difficult, I don’t think I’m the only one that has gone through that. Many athletes abroad, current players that are still playing are going through that, so mentally it’s very, very challenging,” she continued.
In a stellar career, Van Wyk was part and parcel of last year’s WAFCON winning team with South Africa. However, she didn’t feature in the FIFA Women’s World Cup finals this year.
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