Lille skipper Mavuba joins Sparta Prague

LILLE (France): Lille's long serving captain Rio Mavuba is joining Czech side Sparta Prague on a three-year deal, his French club announced on Friday.

The 33-year-old France international midfielder arrived at Lille in 2008, and helped the club lift the Ligue 1 title and French Cup in 2011.

"I'm leaving a club that's given me an enormous amount and to whom I've given everything," Mavuba told Lille's official website.

Mavuba has turned out 13 times for France, playing for his country at the 2014 World Cup.

Unusually, Mavuba's official place of birth on his passport is listed as "born at sea".

He was delivered on board a boat off the coast of Angola in 1984 as his family fled the Angolan civil war.

"It was on the boat, while drifting across the cold waters of the Atlantic, that my father named me Rio (river)," he told the UN Refugee Agency in an interview in 2007.

His late parents, he is the son of former Zaire international Ricky Mavuba Ndokia Ndombe and an Angolan mother who both died before he was 14 - were granted political asylum in France.

He joined Bordeaux in 2002, graduating from their youth academy to the senior team.. He then had a one-season stint with Villarreal in La Liga, before signing for Lille.

At Sparta he will link up with Georges Mandjeck, the Cameroon international who arrived from Lille's Ligue 1 rivals Metz on Thursday.

Mavuba is due to return to Lille at the end of his Sparta stay to take up a role in the club's management.

"I'm very happy that Lille have offered me this opportunity to give back all that they've given me," he said.