Andres Iniesta, a former midfielder for Barcelona and Spain, will depart Vissel Kobe after five years with the Japanese team.
On July 1, at the halfway point of the J-League season, the 39-year-old will take the field for the final time for the team.
Iniesta, who has only played as a substitute three times so far this season for league-leading Vissel, has no imminent plans to retire.
“I want to finish my time here properly and then see what options are available to me,” he said.
“I want to keep playing and then retire while I’m still active. That’s difficult for me to do here, so I want to find a place where I can eventually retire.”
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Iniesta joined Vissel in 2018, and since then, he has made 133 appearances for the team, winning both the Japanese Super Cup and the local Emperor’s Cup.
That came after a 22-year career at Barcelona, where he made 674 appearances as a senior and won 32 championships.
He said choosing to leave Vissel was “one of the hardest decisions of my career”.
“I always thought I would retire here, but things haven’t gone as I wanted them to,” he said.
“For the past few months I’ve trained hard with the intention of contributing to the team, but I started to feel that the coach had different priorities.”
Source: BBC
