Rodrigo Palacio retires from football to enter the world of basketball | Other Sports | Sports

The Argentine Rodrigo Palacio, runner-up in the world in 2014 with the Argentine soccer team and until last season a player for the Italian Brescia -Serie B-, gave the surprise this Tuesday by announcing that he is going over to basketball with Garegnano 1976, a team of the Italian fourth division.

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Palacio, who shares his birthplace (Bahía Blanca) with Manu Ginóbili -Argentine basketball legend- and without a team since the end of last season, announced last Monday his retirement from the world of football at age 40 with a message on his Twitter account: “Thank you very much for everything, football.”

However, the surprise was given this Tuesday when he published a video on the same social network in which he appears playing a friendly tournament with the Garegnano 1976 shirt, from Italian basketball Series D.

“Let no one tell you until what age you can play basketball”, was the phrase with which the former soccer player, who measures 1.76 m, accompanied the video.

At 40 years old, after a season at Brescia in which he played 33 games, scored six goals and provided four assists, Palacio began his second sports career, this time in a sport in which he will use his hands.

The ‘braid’ did not enjoy the dream debut. His first match wearing the Garegnano shirt ended in defeat (73-65)in a game in which he could only score four points.

Before his football retirement, Palacio also wore the shirts of the Argentine teams Bella Vista, Huracán, Banfield and Boca Juniors before traveling to Italy to consecrate himself as one of the great Argentine names of the moment in Serie A, where he played for Genoa , Inter Milan, Bologna and Brescia.

His journey with the senior team, the Albiceleste, with which he played two World Cups, Germany 2006 and Brazil 2014, will inevitably be marked by his error in front of goal in the final against Germany in 2014 which could have been the decisive goal to lift the long-awaited World Cup -which ultimately won the German team-, in a play that ended with the ball going high.

Palacio thus begins, at the age of 40 and after a football career of two decades, a new sporting stage in Italian basketball, in the modest Milanese club of Garegnano 1976.

(D)