Former Dutch international Strootman (34) has stopped playing football

Kevin Strootman is quitting football. The 46-time international announced this on his social media. “Careers come to an end, thanks football! “, the midfielder writes on X.

Strootman started his professional career in Sparta. From Rotterdam he then switched to FC Utrecht and from there things went quickly. Within six months, Utrecht sold the midfielder to PSV for millions.

In Eindhoven he won the KNVB Cup and the Johan Cruijff Shield.

The footballer from Ridderkerk played no fewer than 88 games for PSV before making his first foreign move. The Eindhoven club sold him to AS Roma for 17.5 million euros.

After AS Roma, Strootman played for Marseille, Genoa and Cagliari. The footballer has been immobile since last summer. His former club Sparta made another attempt to bring Strootman back to Rotterdam, but that failed.

In Italy, Strootman was soon nicknamed ‘Il washing machine’, or the washing machine, because of the dirty work he did for his teams from midfield.

On February 9, 2011, Strootman made his debut for the Dutch national team in a practice match against Austria (3-1). After 72 minutes of play he replaced Theo Janssen.

Strootman played a total of 46 international matches, but never played in the final competition. In 2012 he was in the Dutch team for the European Championship, but he did not play a minute.

Two years later, Strootman was due to travel with the Dutch national team to the World Cup in Brazil, but that was postponed due to a serious knee injury. “My world collapsed“, said the midfielder at the time. The Dutch team finished third in that competition.