“I haven’t been able to choose and it’s not the withdrawal I imagined.”
BARCELONA, 26 Mar. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Spanish international Nerea Pena announced this Tuesday that she is ending her professional career as a handball player due to health problems, due to chronic tendinopathy in her knee that has been weighing her down in recent times and that forces her to say goodbye, or See you soon if you return as a coach, to the courts where you have triumphed at the club level and also at the national team level with the Guerreras.
“I want to close a very important stage of my life; that of my sporting career. It has not been easy to make this decision, since unfortunately I have not been able to choose the moment or the way to do it. It is not the retirement as I imagined it. imagined,” he assured the media in an appearance at the Casa del Deporte in Pamplona.
International with Spain in 176 games and with 595 goals to his name as a Guerrera, he leaves handball with three international medals – bronze in the 2011 World Cup in Brazil and silver in the 2019 World Cup in Japan and silver in the European Championships in Hungary and Croatia. 2014–.
“I live in Budapest and I don’t know what I’m going to do in my life, I want to work in whatever it is. I have the title of coach and I wouldn’t mind trying, I’m open to everything. Real life begins,” Pena admitted to the media. .
At the club level, his last games were played with Vipers Kristiansand, a Norwegian team with which he managed to win the Champions League on two occasions. He had previously played for Team Esbjerg in Denmark, Siófok and Ferencvárosi in Hungary and Itxako in Navarre, where he trained and with whom he won four leagues, three Queen’s Cups and an EHF Cup.
“It was my sister who tricked me into joining this sport. And thanks to her I spent some wonderful years and discovered my passion for this sport. My only wish was to retire from the track, but in sport, as in life, the “Things cannot always be chosen. I have accepted my end,” accepted one of the Warriors with the most internationals in the modern era.
For Nera Pena, above all “there is the person.” “And in this last stage my person was being very affected. I close one stage, but to open another, another that I open with great enthusiasm in which I hope to find opportunities to continue growing. I don’t know what the future will hold for me, but prepare yourself because “I come with enthusiasm. See you always, handball,” he said.
At 34 years of age, she leaves the courts after 18 seasons in the elite, although the last ones were clearly marked by injuries and this chronic tendinopathy in her left knee, for which she underwent surgery twice.