Genoa – Eder Citadin Martins retires. And from the Blucerchiata Genoa, messages of affection are pouring in for the idol with the number 23. The Italian-Brazilian’s football journey ends where it began, with the Criciuma jersey brought back to the top in the last year and a half: promotion to Serie A and two Catarinense championships won. “I will play my last match against Atletico Mineiro”. The appointment for the farewell step is today, Estádio Heriberto Hülse, 7 pm local time, 1 am in Italy. “I decided like this, to stop at the end of the first half of the season. I’m approaching 38, the pain is making itself felt and I chose to stop but I gave it my all and if I think about the film of my career, it couldn’t have been better. It’s nice to end in the club where I started as a kid. And Sampdoria is always in my heart too”, says Eder from Brazil.
The Criciuma is in a comfortable mid-table position. Today he will play with a special jersey dedicated to his ace, with the Italian tricolor on the sleeves. Eder is hanging up his boots. And he is doing it on the day in which two teams that have marked his life will face off in a friendly. On one side Empoli, who took him from Criciuma in 2005 and then launched him in Italy. On the other Sampdoria, the club where he played and scored the most: 135 games and 49 goals (13th Blucerchiati scorer ever) from 2012 to 2016. Protagonist of the return to Serie A with Iachini, who exploded with Mihajlovic, among the goals that Eder is most fond of are the three in the derby and the free kick against Inter. Among the striker’s other Italian teams are Frosinone, Brescia and Inter itself. Twenty-six appearances as an oriundo for the national team, with the 2016 European Championship as a protagonist. “At Sampdoria we saw the best of Eder,” he told Secolo XIX in December 2022, when he would have gladly returned to try to avoid falling to Serie B. But the club made other choices. And so here is the romantic return to Criciuma which these days celebrates its strongest player ever. Eder will remain at the club as a director. And he will be able to dedicate himself even more to his horse breeding, a passion he has had since he was a child. “The retirement is approaching, I enjoy every minute on the pitch», he confessed a month ago. A goal he has kept even in this last week as a footballer, a full immersion of emotions he wants to close on a high note, maybe with one of his goals, like Eder. —
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