Andres Iniesta, one of football’s greats, is ending his career

Spanish world and European champion Andres Iniesta is resigning with immediate effect. The 40-year-old explained this at a specially called press conference in Barcelona. He has been without a club since the summer.

Iniesta will go down in football history as one of the most successful players. With FC Barcelona he won no fewer than 32 titles from 2005 to 2018, including the Champions League four times. Under Josep 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 appeared 131 times for the Spanish national team, scoring 14 goals. By far his most important goal came in extra time of the World Cup final in Johannesburg in 2010, when he scored the winning goal against the Netherlands 1-0. Iniesta also won the European Championship title with “La Roja” in 2008 in Switzerland and Austria and in 2012 in Poland and Ukraine.

The boy from Fuentealbilla joined the La Masia youth academy in 1996 and progressed through all of FC Barcelona’s youth departments, where he made his debut in December 2002. After more than twenty years at the club, he left Barcelona for Japan in 2018. At Vissel Kobe he slowly let his career come to an end over five years. In the summer of 2023 he moved to the Emirates Club in the United Arab Emirates, where his contract expired this summer.