French handball star Nikola Karabatic will retire from playing at the end of the 2023-2024 season, announced on Friday the PSG handball player who extended this winter with the capital club, with the Paris-2024 Olympics. on the horizon. “This season will be my last (…) I am starting my 22nd and last professional year, under the colors of Paris Saint-Germain”, writes the triple Olympic champion, aged 39, in a letter published on the site of the club.
This season will be my last and I wanted to write to you.
✉️ @NKARABATIC
— PSG Handball (@psghand) August 25, 2023
With Karabatic, a legend of French sport prepares his bow. The number 44 of Paris Saint-Germain is the most decorated handball player in history at the Olympics with his fellow Experts Luc Abalo and Michaël Guigou: they are all three triple Olympic champions (2008, 2012 and 2021) and medalist silver in Rio (2016)
An exceptional track record
But unlike the other two, Nikola Karabatic maintains the hope, at the Paris-2024 Olympic Games, of further enriching, at the age of 40, an extraordinary record. A CV in blue also counting four world titles, three Europeans… This ninth season with PSG is also the last chance to carry the club from the capital to a first title in the Champions League, the objective when he arrived in Paris in 2015.
The C1, he has already won it three times with three flagship clubs on the continent, whose names – Montpellier, Kiel and Barcelona – give as much indication of the extent of his career. The monument of French sport was deprived of the end of the season with PSG due to phlebitis in the right leg, which appeared at the start of 2023.