Veteran World Cup defender Juan Pablo Sorin is retiring from football after a lackluster stint with Brazilian club Cruzeiro.
The 33-year-old left back ended his 15-year career at a press conference on Tuesday.
"I'm done with football," Sorin said. "It was a beautiful career which I enjoyed a lot and always tried to give my best, give all I had. It was a short career, but I think it's time to stop while I'm still doing well."
Sorin, who played for Argentina in the 2002 and 2006 World Cups, was plagued by injuries with Cruzeiro and played sparingly recently.
"I didn't have the effect I hoped for," Sorin said. "I played only six matches in seven months, that's not a lot. I'm not proud of these numbers."
Sorin was with Germany's Hamburg when he had right knee surgery in May 2007 and played only once afterward. Then he signed last year with Cruzeiro for the third time in his career.
He arrived hoping a good performance would help him return to the Argentine national team, for which he scored 12 goals in 76 matches since his debut in 1995. But injuries gave him no chance.
"It's a conscientious decision," Sorin said. "It was not done in the spur of the moment. I have been thinking about quitting for quite some time."
Sorin said the thought of retirement began in May after he sustained a right thigh muscle injury that kept him from playing in the round of 16 of the Copa Libertadores.
He said one of the reasons he returned to Cruzeiro was to help the team do well in the Latin American competition, but he couldn't recover in time and eventually missed the final in which Cruzeiro lost the title to Argentina's Estudiantes.
Sorin first played for the Brazilian club from 2000 to 2002, helping the two-time Copa Libertadores champion win the Brazilian Cup and the regional Copa Sul-Minas. After playing in Italy, Spain and France, he returned for a short stint in 2004 before moving to Spain's Villarreal and then Hamburg.
Sorin previously played for Italy's Juventus and Lazio, Spain's Barcelona, France's Paris Saint-Germain and Argentina's River Plate and Argentinos Juniors.
Source: Associated Press
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