He was Messi's teammate, football destroyed him and he retired at the age of 32

Lionel Messi's 2011-12 season was one of the best of his career, playing for FC Barcelona. There he had brilliant teammates like Andrés Iniesta or Xavi Hernández, but he also had other teammates who are not as remembered. One of them is Isaac Cuenca, who despite having been part of that brilliant team, today decided to retire from football at the age of 32, where he assured that football “destroyed him".

Cuenca announced his retirement as a professional last October after a career of just over eleven years. He debuted in Pep Guardiola's Barcelona and got to play with Messi. Then, he went through Ajax, Deportivo La Coruña, Bursaspor from Turkey, Granada, Beer Sheva from Israel and the Japanese clubs, Sagan Tosu and Vegalta Sendai. However, throughout his career, injuries made his life impossible.

“I have had six knee surgeries, all of them the same. I tried to make an optimal recovery to return to the playing fields, but the sixth operation was very difficult, I suffered a lot and I said enough was enough", was what the footballer said in an interview with RAC1. “I could only train once a week and after games my leg felt like a ball. I was not recovering well and the doctor encouraged me to try a final intervention because I had no cartilage and my tibia and femur were colliding a lot. I needed two transplants and I went back to the operating room, but it didn't work, so I quit football", he said.

Soccer has been hard for Isaac

“The most important thing that football has taught me is that not everything is the way you want. If you think you are very good, there is a better one. And if you think you're great, maybe you'll get injured and no one will love you. It has put me in places that I did not expect and look at me now, retired at 30 years old", he confessed and then stated: “If you cling to something, it can end up destroying you. And I feel like this has happened to me. If I had retired a year and a half earlier, I wouldn't have suffered so much. I stuck to football and ended up doing great. I couldn't even compete in the Kings League. Now I am reborn".