Former Italy and Lazio striker Ciro Immobile has retired from professional football, his club Paris FC announced on Friday.
The 36-year-old striker joined Paris FC from Bologna in February and made 12 Ligue 1 appearances, scoring twice. The French club said Immobile had decided to step away from the game to spend more time with his loved ones after 17 years as a professional footballer.
Immobile scored 306 goals in 599 club appearances across all competitions and netted 17 times in 57 appearances for Italy.
He was part of Italy’s Euro 2020-winning squad and scored twice during the tournament, which was held in 2021 after being postponed for a year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Italy defeated England on penalties in the final at Wembley in July 2021.
The striker enjoyed the most successful period of his career during eight seasons at Lazio, where he became the club’s all-time leading scorer with 207 goals in 340 appearances. He also won the Coppa Italia and two Italian Super Cups with the Rome-based club.
In 2020, Immobile won the European Golden Shoe after matching Gonzalo Higuain’s Serie A record of 36 goals in a single season. He finished as Serie A’s top scorer four times.
Immobile also represented several other clubs during his career, including Juventus, Pescara, Genoa and Torino in Italy, Borussia Dortmund in Germany, Sevilla in Spain and Besiktas in Turkey.
His retirement brings the curtain down on a distinguished career in which he established himself as one of Serie A’s most prolific strikers and played a key role in Italy’s European Championship triumph.