Mathieu Warnier, Media365: published on Tuesday, December 31, 2024, at 16:20.
After spending time at Marseille between 2021 and 2024 without playing a single game, Spanish striker Pedro Ruiz announced on Monday his decision to retire from football at just 24 years old. He cited nagging injuries over the years as the reason behind his selection.
Pedro Ruiz has definitively put his dreams in the drawer. A product of the Real Madrid youth academy and a member of the Olympique de Marseille squad from 2021 to 2024, the Spanish attacker revealed his decision to end his career at the young age of 24. Basically, after being loaned by the Foca club to NEC Nijmegen during the 2021-2022 season, he only managed to appear in three games and has not stepped on the field again since November 20, 2021. In an interview with the Spanish newspaper As , shared that the origins of the problems that plagued his career can be traced back to a match played with Real Madrid’s reserves in January 2020, during which he suffered a serious knee injury. “In a clearance by my center, I was challenged by Copete, who is now in Mallorca. I jumped with a cramp in my knee, and when I stretched it, everything broke,” he said. “The cruciate, the internal meniscus and the external meniscus.” However, despite the injury, Pedro Ruiz insisted that he could not leave the field, obeying the instructions of Raúl, a club legend who is still in charge of Castilla. “Stubborn as I am, I played another five minutes,” added the Sevillian. “But I remember they scored a goal, and when I went to throw in, my knee completely dislocated.”
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After consulting with Dr. Manuel Leyes, Pedro Ruiz revealed that the doctor told him it was “the worst knee injury he had ever seen.” Thanks to Pablo Longoria, the Spanish striker found an opportunity by signing with Marseille in 2021, and was then immediately loaned to the Netherlands. “I felt like I was coming back to life,” confessed the Andalusian. “I made my debut in a friendly against a Bundesliga team and scored… I was in pain, but I went to train on a bike; it was paradise for me.” However, another injury halted his progress after just three games. “In Marseille, they saw that he had a sprain in his cruciate; it was not broken, but it was not working,” summarized Pedro Ruiz. After long weeks trying to regain full function in his knee, the young Spanish forward had to accept the end of his career. “We spent a lot of money, but nothing worked,” he concluded. “My problem is not that I can’t play at a high level; it’s that I can’t run from here to there.” Considered at the time as a promise of Spanish football, Pedro Ruiz says goodbye to the world of football in silence, without having met the expectations that were had of him.
