The American football legend, seven-time Super Bowl winner, will soon announce his retirement from sport after 22 seasons on the pitch, American media have announced.
It’s the end of an era in the United States where star Tom Brady, seven-time Super Bowl winner and considered the best quarterback in American football history, will retire at 44 after 22 seasons in NFL, several American media reported on Saturday.
Brady, who was crowned champion last year with Tampa Bay, after winning six titles in twenty years with the New England Patriots, will hang up his cleats and put his helmet away, said ESPN and NFL Network. The player has not yet formalized his decision but the NFL has reported the information on his Twitter account. Asked by ESPN, his agent, Don Yee, said the star himself ” will be the only person to express his projects with total accuracy. He knows the realities of the world of American football and the timing that entails better than anyone, so it will be soon “.
Seven NFL titles, five-time Super Bowl MVP
In 2020, the quarterback had left the New Englands Patriots, after twenty years of an already sensational career, to join the Buccaneers, then one of the weakest teams in the NFL, and who had no longer qualified for the NFL. play-offs since 2007. Against all odds, he led them to the top, by beating the Kansas City Chiefs, Brady then collecting his 7th title for his 10th final. He is the only quarterback to have won so many titles, far ahead of his childhood idol, Joe Montana, who has won four.
Brady has been named Super Bowl MVP five times, three times in the regular season. He has, among many other records, that of the number of yards traveled in the pass. For many observers, he is the best quarterback in history.
His extraordinary longevity prompted him to pursue an eighth ring – a second with the Buccaneers – but saw his dream come crashing down last Sunday in a 30-27 loss to the Los Angeles Rams , despite an incredible comeback as his side trailed 27-3 in the third quarter. In the wake of this defeat, the player had cast doubt on his future by declaring that he had not made a decision about the rest of his career.
A page of US sport turns
The rumor of a possible retirement swelled in recent days even if the player multiplied the statements suggesting that he could continue. ” I really think I can play as long as I want. Truly. I could actually play until I was 50 or 55 if I wanted to. “, he had notably declared last October. The loss to the Los Angeles Rams obviously decided otherwise, even though he still has a year left on his contract with the Buccaneers.
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The end of the career of the one who will remain as one of the greatest players in his sport will in any case sound like a thunderclap in the United States, where Brady is much more than just a football player. Drafted in 199th position in 2000 by the New England Patriots, many did not give a lot of skin to the frail quarterback when he arrived in the franchise. But through hard work, Tom Brady quickly managed to make his place to gradually become an icon of US sport and the embodiment of the American dream. The couple he forms with the Brazilian supermodel Gisèle Bündchen has also contributed a little more to making him one of the most popular personalities of Americans, who will now have to get used to no longer seeing him on the pitch. .