At the age of 41, Santi Cazorla is hanging up his soccer cleats. The Spaniard may be ending his career with a relegation, but also “right where the magic began.”
From Qatar, Santi Cazorla had returned for the 2023–24 season to the place where his long and successful career had once begun. The Spaniard spent the past three seasons at his youth club, Real Oviedo, where he had previously served as a ball boy but had never played at the professional level. It was a special return in more ways than one.
“I’d play for free, but that’s not allowed,” Cazorla—who ultimately earned the mandatory minimum salary of 91,000 euros—had explained in 2025. By the end of his career, he had played 89 competitive matches for Oviedo, which he had led as a regular starter to its long-awaited promotion to La Liga. Last season, Cazorla made 28 appearances in the top flight, though he was unable to prevent the team’s immediate relegation.
This fact, however, in no way diminishes his career, which is now coming to an end. Nor does it diminish the gratitude and respect he has earned from his beloved club: “From the very first day of his return, the midfielder proved himself to be exactly what he is: a leader. His leadership qualities, his dedication, and his skill became a role model for the team and a source of joy for the fans, who welcomed back one of their own,” reads a farewell video released by Real Oviedo.
Cazorla himself could not have imagined a better ending than spending the final years of his professional career back home: “In the end, I came back—not to bring something to a close, but to feel it again. To remind myself why I started. And now, as everything fades away, the soccer cleats are hung up, and the noise gives way to silence, everything falls into place. The end was at my home, right where the magic began. Because there are stories that never end, but remain forever. Like an 8, like infinity,” said the 41-year-old.
A Miraculous Medical Comeback
Cazorla looks back on a career during which he won, among other things, the European Championship twice with Spain (2008, 2012) and the FA Cup twice with Arsenal (2014, 2015). He played the most competitive matches—330 in total—for Villarreal CF.
“I’ve experienced some wonderful things… but also difficult moments I hadn’t anticipated,” said the Spaniard, whose career could have ended much earlier. Between 2016 and 2018, he was sidelined for a full 636 days due to a serious injury. An eight-centimeter section of his Achilles tendon had to be reconstructed using skin grafted from his forearm. Yet even the eight surgeries he underwent ultimately did not prevent him from continuing his professional soccer career for many more years.
It remains to be seen what roles Cazorla will take on in the future. In Oviedo, at any rate, the doors will “always be open” to him, the club made clear: “This will always be his home, and the club wants to continue shaping the future together with Santi—in the role, at the level, and in the capacity that he himself chooses and that makes him happy.”