Andrés Iniesta, legend of Barça and the Spanish football team, with whom he won a World Cup and two Euros, announced Tuesday in Barcelona that he was retiring at the age of 40, after a final professional experience in the United Arab Emirates.
“Being on the pitch is over,” declared the midfielder, visibly moved, after talking at length about his entire career in front of the press, during an event organized in Barcelona.
“I can’t stay away from football, it’s my life and it will continue to be my life. Now I have to continue training, I’m getting my coaching diploma and that’s the next step,” he continued. “I will try to come back to do a big job, but it will not be running behind the ball, but from another place.”
Andrés Iniesta played sixteen years in the first team of Barça, his training club, five at Vissel Kobe in Japan, before a final one-year stint at the Emirates Club, in the United Arab Emirates.
Trained at La Masia, the nursery of FC Barcelona, he is considered one of the greatest players in the history of the Catalan club, symbolizing, with Xavi and Lionel Messi, the domination of Barça’s collective game at European level between 2008 and 2015.
He played a total of 674 matches in the Blaugrana jersey and won 32 trophies, including four Champions Leagues and nine Spanish Championships, while establishing himself as the key player in the success of the Spanish selection (130 caps in total) at the same period, lifting Euro-2008, the 2010 World Cup and Euro-2012 in quick succession.
Already a respected figure in world football, Iniesta, who became a Catalan by adoption but was born near Albacete (Castile-la-Mancha, center), entered the hearts of all Spaniards one evening in July 2010 in Johannesburg, in South Africa, offering La Roja its first World Cup with a half-volley in the 116th minute against the Netherlands.
Congratulated and praised by many of his former coaches in videos broadcast on Tuesday when his retirement was announced, Iniesta was also praised by his former partner Messi, who spoke on Instagram of “one of the most magical teammates” with whom he had evolved.
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