BREAKING NEWS!! Gerard Piqué Announced his retirement. 😔

Gerard Pique is the best defender in Barca's HISTORY but don't be shocked if he returns as president
The last time Gerard Pique left Barcelona he came back four years later to establish himself as the greatest central defender in the club’s history.
The farewell video he posted on social media on Thursday night left no one in any doubt that he’ll be back again, and next time it’s likely to be as president.
‘You all know me and sooner or later I will return,’ he said in the video and it was lost on no one that he was looking up at the directors’ box as he said it.
Until the ‘President Pique’ there will be plenty of time to recall Pique the player - a winner of 30 trophies with Barcelona, plus the World Cup and European Championship with Spain.
It won’t just be what he won that he’s remembered for; it will be the way he won it. His ‘Piquenbauer’ nickname fitted him perfectly - few since Franz Beckenbauer have ever played the central defensive position so well.
Back in 2008 when Pep Guardiola took over the Barcelona first team he wanted everyone to be faultless on the ball - that was the season Pique returned from a four-year spell at Manchester United, and he was the perfect fit for Guardiola’s revolution.
As a 17-year-old kid at Old Trafford he was once handed a video of Franco Baresi and told to watch and learn. ‘I was given the film by one of the coaches, Jim Ryan, because he said that I shared some of his characteristics and that I could learn a lot from him,’ he told me in an interview in 2011.
United had spotted that polished poise in possession that positional excellence, even if with Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic ahead of him he rarely got to show it for United.
Guardiola encouraged the playmaker on his return and paired with the more pugnacious Carles Puyol, they were the perfect partnership.
‘The Odd Couple’ Graham Hunter called them in his book ‘Spain’ chronicling the domination of the team that won two Euros and a World Cup. Pique paired with Puyol in the second and third of those tournaments and their friendship flourished off the pitch - the younger man bringing the senior partner out of his social shell.
Pique had enough front for the pair of them - in his first season at Barcelona he scored the sixth goal in a 2-6 win at the Santiago Bernabeu and celebrated in front of the fuming home crowd - the grin was almost as wide as the scoreline.
It helped Pique become the Barça player many Madrid fans most loved to hate, but he reveled in the jeers and whistles even when - scandalously when you consider what he won for Spain - the same boos could be heard at some Spain games.
With Dani Alves to his right, Puyol alongside him, and Eric Abidal to his left, Pique was the man who never put a foot wrong in Barcelona’s brilliant defence. Never mind that Iniesta, Busquets, Xavi midfield, or the mighty Messi and his various associates in attack, Guardiola’s brilliant Barça was built on an extraordinary back four.
Pique was never blessed with lightning pace, but he played the highline impeccably reading every game to perfection and he was just as good alongside Javier Mashcerano when the Argentine replaced Puyol as his partner.
His 30 club trophies haul is second only to Messi (35) and Iniesta (32) and only four players including his current coach have played more games for the club.
His relationship with Xavi has been strained by the club’s desire to usher him out the door in the hope of avoiding the need to pay off his contract - estimates put the amount that would have been paid him had he stayed until the end of his deal at 40million euros.
That desire led to the signing of three players in the summer who could all play in his position. He barely played in the first two months of this season and it was too much to ask for him to perform at his best against Inter Milan when he was thrown in because of injuries and Xavi’s inflexible tactics still demanded that ultra high line. His last Champions League night at the Camp Nou was not a memorable one.
‘Thanks for everything, Geri. They have been very unfair with you,’ tweeted Puyol. No doubt in reference to the club for squeezing him out and to the minority of supporters in the Camp Nou who whistled him at times in the games he played after the match against Inter. ‘Very few have defended the shirt the way you did’.
His ownership of that club has always felt like an apprenticeship for his eventual presidency of Barça.
He set up the deal for the club signing a 50m euros-a-season shirt sponsorship deal with Rakuten in 2020 and he will not be short of ideas as to how they should progress as a club.
That’s the future. The present is his final game at the Camp Nou this weekend when he’ll be given the send-off he deserves. And the glorious past can be recalled, when in the heart of the team’s defence, there was nobody better.