‘I’m at peace with it’

stops playing football at the age of 36. The former Dutch international told this on Tuesday evening RTL7 during the preview of the second semi-final between Paris Saint-Germain and Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League. Lens is currently a player for FC Versailles, where he has an expiring contract. The Amsterdammer has worn the shirt of AZ, PSV, Sunderland and Besiktas in the past.

Lens was active in the youth of Ajax and Almere City, but made his breakthrough as a player for NEC. The Nijmegen team rented him from AZ in the 2006/2007 season, which then sold him to PSV for 3.5 million euros in the summer of 2010. Lens was once crowned champion in the Netherlands. Not as a PSV player, but under the leadership of Louis van Gaal at AZ. Lens won the KNVB Cup once with PSV. The Eindhoven team sold the attacker to Dynamo Kyiv for almost ten million euros in the summer of 2013, after which he also played for Sunderland, Fenerbahçe, Besiktas, Karagümrük and FC Versailles.

“Yes, I am at peace with it. I’ve had a great career. I was able to play at great clubs, I was able to play in a World Cup,” says Lens. “I became champion in certain countries. I look back on my career with great pleasure, for sure. I think there are some nice ones transfers in between, but in the end a boyhood dream came true and that is that I was able to play in a World Cup,” Lens responds to the question of what the highlight of his career is. According to Lens himself, he was close to a place in the Dutch selection for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa and the 2012 European Championship in Poland and Ukraine. He missed out on those final tournaments, but he was there in 2014 in Brazil and played in all group matches and the quarter-final against Costa Rica.

Lens eventually wore the shirt of the Dutch national team 34 times, good for eight goals and seven assists. He played his last international match on June 9, 2017 against Luxembourg (5-0). During his playing career, Lens mainly worked with Dick Advocaat. “I think I worked with him at five different clubs and with the Dutch national team, so it was often said in the dressing room that he is my football father.” Advocaat and Lens regularly managed to find each other when one of the two embarked on a new adventure. “He went to Sparta or FC Utrecht, I’m not sure anymore, and I actually called him to congratulate him. He answered and immediately joked that he wouldn’t take me with him. That was not the intention at the time. But it was also the other way around that he called me and I said: I will come to where you are,” he said.