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Joel Matip to leave Liverpool at end of season after 8 years at the club

11m ago
Soccer News (AP)

LIVERPOOL, England (AP) - Joel Matip will leave Liverpool at the end of the season to end an eight-year association with the club.

Liverpool announced the 32-year-old center back's imminent departure on Friday, two days before the team's final Premier League game. His contract expires next month.

"In all the years that I have been involved in football, I am not sure I have come across too many players who are more loved than Joel Matip," said Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp, who is also leaving Liverpool. "I'm not even sure it would be possible to say anything bad about him.

"A wonderful professional, a wonderful footballer and a wonderful human being - we have been blessed to have him with us for as long as we have and now all we can do is wish him well as he heads off in a new direction."

Matip, a ball-playing center back, arrived at Anfield on a free transfer from Schalke in the offseason of 2016 as one of Klopp's first signings.

The former Cameroon international played 201 games for Liverpool and helped the team win the Champions League and Premier League.

"I have said before that if there was one person who wouldn't care if he was underrated it would be Joel," Klopp said, "but the truth is we could not have rated him more highly."

Other players leaving their clubs at the end of the Premier League season are Manchester United pair Raphael Varane and Anthony Martial and Chelsea defender Thiago Silva.

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