Busquets to retire at season's end; Messi's longtime ally confirms retirement

Sergio Busquets, the Barcelona and Spain midfielder whose game-long calm and tactical intelligence underpinned the tiki-taka era, announced he will retire from professional football at the end of the season. The 37-year-old posted a brief message on Instagram on Friday saying he is goodbye to his career and thanking football for its opportunities, adding that he has enjoyed an “incredible story” for nearly 20 years.

Busquets’s decision closes a chapter that helped define a generation of Barcelona and Spanish football. He spent 15 seasons with Barcelona from 2008 to 2023, logging 722 appearances for the Catalan club and contributing to a period of unprecedented success. During that stretch, Barcelona won the Champions League, multiple La Liga titles and the club’s own collection of domestic trophies, while the Spanish national team claimed the 2010 World Cup and the 2012 European Championship. He was widely regarded as the subtle engine of Barcelona’s midfield, a player whose positioning, balance and awareness often went under the radar even as the team dominated.

Remarkably, Busquets ranks behind only Lionel Messi and Xavi in Barcelona’s all-time appearances, with 778 and 767 matches, respectively. His longevity across eras underscored his value to Barcelona’s system, where he often served as the pivot between defense and attack. In addition to his club career, Busquets formed a long-standing on-pitch partnership with Messi, one of the sport’s greatest collaborations. The two played side by side 640 times for Barcelona and Inter Miami, a testament to their enduring chemistry and mutual understanding on the field. Busquets’s contributions extended beyond statistics, helping to shape a style of play that influenced generations of players and coaches.

The end of Busquets’s time in Barcelona also marks a broader transition for the club and for Spanish football. He remained a central figure in the era when Barcelona’s midfield trio of Busquets, Xavi and Iniesta powered a style that redefined possession and pressing. Alongside Iniesta and Xavi, Busquets helped Barcelona win major trophies and inspired a philosophy that many clubs sought to emulate. When Busquets joined Inter Miami in the wake of the MLS expansion of international stars, he and Messi continued their partnership on a new stage, illustrating how their on-field connection endured beyond the Camp Nou.

Busquets did not outline concrete post-retirement plans in his Instagram note, but his decision to step away at the end of the current season signals the closing of a defining chapter for one of football’s most distinctive midfield operators. In Barcelona, the retirement of a player who could read a game as if it were a book underscores the shift toward a new generation stepping into a legacy set by the likes of Messi, Xavi, Iniesta and Busquets themselves. For supporters of the club and the Spanish national team, the retirement marks the passing of an era in which a compact, disciplined midfielder helped orchestrate some of the sport’s most memorable campaigns.

As Busquets prepares to bid farewell to professional football, fans and commentators alike will look back on a career marked by consistency, adaptability and a quiet leadership that proved essential to some of football’s most celebrated teams. His Instagram farewell leaves room for reflection on a period when a single player could anchor a team’s identity across multiple competitions and eras, while his on-pitch partnership with Messi remains a defining image of two of the sport’s most influential figures. The next steps for Busquets, and for Barcelona as they recalibrate their squad in the post-Busquets era, will be watched closely by fans around the world who remember the midfielder as a key figure in one of football’s most transformative generations.