Spanish world and European champion Andres Iniesta is retiring with immediate effect. The 40-year-old made the announcement at a specially convened press conference in Barcelona. He had been without a club since the summer.
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- Andres Iniesta is ending his career at the age of 40.
- The Spaniard won the Champions League four times with Barcelona and became European and World Champion with Spain.
- Iniesta last played in the United Arab Emirates and had been without a club since the summer.
Iniesta will go down in the history books as one of the most successful players in football. He won no fewer than 32 titles with FC Barcelona between 2005 and 2018, including the Champions League four times. Under Pep Guardiola, together with his congenial teammates Xavi, Sergio Busquets and Lionel Messi, he shaped the team that celebrated the short passing game known as tiki-taka. In Guardiola's debut season in 2008/09, the Catalans triumphed in all competitions.
Iniesta made 131 appearances for the Spanish national team, scoring 14 goals. His most important goal by far came in extra time of the 2010 World Cup final in Johannesburg, when he scored the winning goal against the Netherlands to make it 1-0. In 2008 in Switzerland and Austria and in 2012 in Poland and Ukraine, Iniesta also won the European Championship title with "La Roja".
The youngster from Fuentealbilla joined the youth academy "La Masia" in 1996 and passed through all the youth divisions of FC Barcelona, for whom he made his debut in December 2002. After more than 20 years at the club, he left Barcelona for Japan in 2018. He slowly wound down his career over five years at Vissel Kobe. In the summer of 2023, he moved to Emirates Club in the United Arab Emirates, where his contract expired this summer.
