Joaquín Sánchez hangs up his boots after 23 years of professional career. At the age of 41, the talented winger from Puerto de Santa María, “la finta y el sprint”, has made a decision officially released by the Verdiblanco club in a video in which he compares his colorful football with joy and art and the genuinely Andalusian emotions that have surrounded his entire career.
«Life is a constant evolution and the secret is the ability to adapt to changes. For 23 years I have tried to make my football an art and to be remembered from generation to generation, from the classic to the contemporary. Now all that remains is to hang up my boots, my art. A window into eternity », says Joaquín while he tours several rooms full of works of art, like the ones that for more than two decades on the pitch he has left in the retina of the fan.
It was an expected decision, although Joaquín’s state of form still invited him to extend a prolific career like few others. Betis loses a captain, one of its most iconic footballers, but gains a legend who will forever be in the pantheon of verdiblancas deities.
Two Copa del Rey titles, 14 campaigns as a Betic divided into two stages and almost half a thousand games carrying the shield of the 13 bars mark a career that transcends the pitch. Joaquín has been much more than a talented player who spent, in addition to his beloved Betis, Valencia, Málaga and Fiorentina, and who came to play 51 games with the Spanish team, with whom he played two World Cups (Korea and Japan 2002 and Germany 2006) and a Eurocup (Portugal 2004).
In that summer of 2002 he became an icon. His unmistakable wit and wit won over Asian fans who were watching a World Cup for the first time. Feints, bicycles, dribbling and those classic gallops well attached to the line of right lime, old-fashioned, delighted the Far East.
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