“Everthing is ending” – Arsenal double winner announces retirement | OneFootball

Santi Cazorla Retires at 41 After an Extraordinary Football Journey

Santi Cazorla has retired at 41, bringing an end to one of football’s most remarkable careers. For Arsenal supporters, he remains the elegant midfielder who helped deliver two FA Cups, including that vital free-kick in the 2014 final against Hull City. For Spain, he was part of a generation that won the European Championship twice. For anyone who followed his story closely, the final chapter at Real Oviedo says plenty about the man.

Cazorla’s retirement was not simply about age catching up with him. His career looked finished in 2016 after complications from surgery led to gangrene. Eleven operations followed. Many players would have stopped there. He did not. He fought through it, got back on the pitch and kept going for three more years with his boyhood club.

Arsenal Legacy and Spain Success

At Arsenal, Cazorla brought control, balance and technical quality in a side that often relied on his calmness under pressure. He could play off either foot, dictate tempo and produce moments of precision when games tightened up. That free-kick in the FA Cup final remains one of the defining moments of his English career.

Internationally, his place is secure. Two European Championship titles with Spain put him in elite company, and he did it in one of the strongest eras any national team has produced.

Real Oviedo Return Meant More

The ending matters. Cazorla went back to Oviedo and did it on modest terms. The club said, “Cazorla decided to come back earning the minimum salary allowed by the league and donated all his image rights to the club.” That tells you plenty. They added, “In return, he only asked that 10 per cent of the sales of his jersey be entirely dedicated to Real Oviedo’s youth academy, to contribute to the growth of future generations.”

That is not sentimentality. That is substance.

Cazorla summed it up perfectly: “Now that everything is ending, when the boots are being hung up, and the noise is turning into silence, everything fits together, because the ending wasn’t just anywhere – I was at home.” A fine player, yes. More than that, a serious professional who earned every bit of respect that came his way.