Former Leicester City left-back Ryan Bertrand has confirmed his retirement from football a year after he exited the King Power Stadium.
Bertrand, a free transfer from Southampton in 2021, only played 11 matches for City in a difficult spell. He didn’t manage a single outing in his final 18 months at the club.
Released at the end of his contract last summer and having not played for any side since, the 34-year-old has now officially called time on his career. He finishes with Champions League, Europa League, and FA Cup winners’ medals, and with 19 England caps to his name.
Speaking on Sky Sports News, Bertrand said: “Just to clarify officially, I will be retiring from football. It’s been a little while but I get asked a lot of questions, like ‘when are you coming back, what are you doing?’ So, just to make that official, I am retiring and very much looking forward to the next steps.”
Linking up with Brendan Rodgers again, having worked with him during days in youth football at Chelsea, Bertrand made a promising start to life at the King Power Stadium. In pre-season, he looked solid defensively and dangerous going forward, starting the Community Shield win and looking set to make the left-back spot his own.
However, a bout of Covid interrupted his start to the Premier League campaign, and he found it difficult to reach the levels he had shown in the summer. He really struggled in the Europa League defeat to Napoli in December 2021, and then missed a penalty in the Carabao Cup quarter-final shoot-out loss to Liverpool just before Christmas.
That was his final senior game for the club as he injured his knee shortly afterwards, never recovering to a level where he was considered for selection. He did feature for the Under-21s in April 2023, by which time Dean Smith was in charge, but didn’t get back into first-team reckoning and his two-year deal ended that summer, after City’s relegation.
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