The former Liverpool defender Joël Matip has retired from football at the age of 33.

The Cameroon centre-back made 201 appearances for the club after arriving from Schalke in 2016, winning a host of honours at Anfield including the 2019 Champions League and 2020 Premier League, and also won 27 international caps.

He suffered an anterior cruciate ligament injury against Fulham in December, which turned out to be his final game for the club, who he left at the end of last season.

Matip was among the crop of players signed by Jürgen Klopp in his first summer window at Liverpool in 2016. The rangy centre-back, noted for his ability to dribble the ball out of defence, eventually achieved cult hero status among Liverpool fans having arrived on a free transfer and later forming a solid defensive partnership with Virgil van Dijk.

Klopp paid tribute to Matip in May this year when the defender’s departure from Liverpool was confirmed. “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 Joël Matip,” said the former manager. “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. Joël’s qualities as a player are there for all to see and as a club, we have benefited from them since the moment he joined. I don’t think he’s had too many headlines over the years but he has only ever been a very famous figure within our group. I have said before that if there was one person who wouldn’t care if he was underrated it would be Joël, but the truth is we could not have rated him more highly.”