What Kun Agüero’s last two years have been like: from forced retirement in tears to this present with renewed hope

A WhatsApp audio from the cardiologist who treats him and some suggestive phrases from him made many football fans excited at the idea of ​​seeing Sergio Agüero back on the pitch playing as a professional. Almost 40 months have passed since the last official match of the former Argentine national team striker, who in that period never completely separated himself from sport nor abandoned the arenas: in various functions he maintained a strong presence of the public, especially after his foray across various digital platforms.

“I don’t know what awaits me in another life, but I have many people who love me and want the best for me. I will continue to be connected to football and try to enjoy life a little more. For now I will be calm, I won’t do anything for a while,” she explained. Okay on 15 December 2021, when in the stands of the Camp Nou stadium he announced his retirement from football following a Cardiac arrhythmia who had been taken over after feeling ill in the middle of a match between Barcelona AND Alaves on October 30th.

After a few weeks of rest in which he divided his days between Miami and Punta del Este, and of which he took advantage of playing golf, tennis and horse riding, the former Manchester City and Atlético Madrid player began to engage heavily in several projects related to activities that had entered their lives as recreational segments and ended up turning into business opportunities.

In mid-2020, in the midst of the pandemic, Agüero began broadcasting on Twitch which quickly attracted numerous followers, to the point that his account today has 4.8 million followers (he also has 11.9 million followers on TikTok). In these broadcasts, he interacted with his followers and other streamers in exchanges in which he addressed topics as diverse as the development of European football tournaments, e-sports, Argentina’s tax structure, security policies or the development of vaccines against covid-19.

Based on that success, Disney signed him in April 2022 to add to the ESPN and Star+ structure. Since then his main work has taken place on streaming platforms, in broadcasts parallel to those of Champions League matches and other competitions broadcast by the media conglomerate’s signals, in which he comments, in an extremely relaxed style, on what happens in the meetings , while interacting with his followers.

This task earned him an unexpected recognition last November: on the occasion of the first presentation of the Martín Fierro Latino Awards, whose ceremony took place at the Manuel Artime Theater in Miami, the Association of Argentine Television and Radio Journalists (Aptra) awarded him awarded the statuette that distinguished him as the most outstanding in the Digital Vision on TV or Platform category.

New technologies offered him other opportunities that the former footballer was able to exploit. In October 2020, while still working at Manchester City, he launched Krü Esports, an eSports organization of which he is CEO. Since his retirement he has been more involved in the activities of the structure which includes players, coaches, analysts, managers and streamers.

In this context, in August 2023 the former attacker first traveled to Düsseldorf to accompany representatives of his team at the Rocket League World Cup and then to Los Angeles to support the representatives who competed in the Valorant competition.

The Krü Esports project received a major boost last November, when Lionel Messi came on board as a co-owner of the organization after signing a corporate alliance with his friend and former teammate in the national team. “I am happy to share the club with Leo in a new phase and with other challenges. His presence is relevant because it projects values ​​such as perseverance, humility and resilience. He is a figure who inspires everyone and will make a great contribution to the scene in general,” Agüero underlined.

Additionally, in November 2022 it launched Kuniverse, its own space in The Sandbox (one of the world’s leading metaverse platforms) which added a second episode last December. To give momentum to this venture, the former attacker usually plays games online and shares content through his Twitch channel with other streamers and guests.

As if this were not enough, in recent years Agüero has also competed in several professional poker events, including the 2023 World Series which took place in Las Vegas, and has published publications related to world football news on Stake, a online betting and casino. .

Beyond all these forays into new territories, the Okay He never left professional football, which continued to give him satisfaction, even though he no longer played on the pitch. In May 2022 he went to Manchester to attend the unveiling of the statue with which City immortalized him outside the Etihad Stadium.

“I am very grateful to the club for making this statue in recognition of my career in Manchester. It is something very special and very beautiful for me, seeing myself 10 years ago is very emotional”, he said during the event where the galvanized steel structure created by the artist Andy Scott, which commemorated the goal scored against the striker. Queen’s Park Rangers in a match corresponding to the last match of the 2011/12 Premier League which earned City the English championship title after 44 years.

In the same year he experienced the consecration of the Argentine team at the World Cup in Qatar up close. Although he had traveled to the Middle East as an analyst for ESPN, he remained in constant contact with those who had been his colleagues until the previous year and with whom he had shared the Copa América victory in Brazil.

The former player visited the Argentine concentration of the University of Doha several times, participated in some training sessions, followed the matches in each of the stadiums in which the team led by Lionel Scaloni performed and was also the protagonist of a memorable streaming session with Lionel Messi, Leandro Paredes, Rodrigo De Paul and Alejandro Gómez a few hours before the quarter-final match against Holland.

After the victory against France in the final, Agüero jumped onto the Lusail Stadium pitch to celebrate with his former teammates. On the grass he raised the cup and carried Messi on his shoulders. He then took part in the celebrations in the changing rooms and accompanied the players in the caravan that took them back to Doha University.

Although the man trained in Independiente’s lower divisions has not played an official match for more than three years, he has participated in some exhibition matches. On January 28, 2023 he wore the Barcelona Guayaquil shirt during the traditional Yellow Nightin which every year the Ecuadorian team presents its team.

And on December 5 he took part in a match between South American football personalities organized by Conmebol at the DRV PNK stadium in Fort Lauderdale (United States). That day he was part of the Tango team, directed by Roberto Trotta and composed, among others, of Gonzalo Higuaín, Javier Zanetti, Carlos Valderrama and the former Jamaican athlete Usain Bolt, who defeated the Samba team led by Francisco 2 to 1 Maturana and which included, among others, Ronaldinho and Ivan Zamorano.

Furthermore, last year the former striker played some matches in the first season of the Kings League, a 7-a-side football competition created by Kosmos, the sporting events organization company founded and chaired by Gerard Piqué. He did it with Kunisports, the team of which he is president, whose coach is the former Vélez Martín Posse player and for which Pablo Zabaleta, Augusto Fernández, Nicolás Pareja and Walter Montillo, among others, also played.

In those interventions Agüero showed flashes of his category, even if he did so in a tournament whose competitiveness is light years away from the super-professional football in which he has distinguished himself since his debut with the Independiente shirt on 5 July 2003, when He was only 15 years and 33 days old, in a match against San Lorenzo.

Reintegration into high-performance sports still seems like a utopia. For now, the Okay He has been training for a few weeks. Their short-term goal is to participate in two seven-a-side football tournaments in May which will be held in Argentina and the United States. The rest? Time (and doctors) will tell…