Spain and Barcelona great Iniesta announces retirement after 22-year career

By The Associated Press on October 8, 2024.

MADRID (AP) – Andrés Iniesta, who scored Spain’s World Cup-winning goal in 2010 and was one of the key players who made Barcelona’s tiki-taka thrive for so long, announced his retirement from soccer on Tuesday.

The 40-year-old Iniesta ended a 22-year career that also included two European Championship titles and four Champions Leagues trophies.

“I never expected that this day would come,” an emotional Iniesta said. “I never imagined it.”

Since leaving Barcelona in 2018, he had been playing with Vissel Kobe in Japan, and for the last year with club Emirates in the UAE Pro League.

Iniesta made his first-team debut with Barcelona in 2002, and made 674 appearances.

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