Trezeguet to leave Juve at season´s end

Former France forward David Trezeguet said on Thursday that he will leave Italian giants Juventus at the end of the season.

Trezeguet joined Juve from Monaco in 2000 after scoring the golden goal winner for France in the European Championship final against Italy that summer.

He has scored more than 160 goals for Juventus and is the highest scoring foreigner ever to have played for the club.

However, the striker of Argentine heritage has since lost his place in the Juventus first team and started only one league match last season, while this season he has yet to figure.

He was widely rumoured to be on his way out during the summer but stayed at the club where he has a contract until 2011.

However, now he says he will cut that short by a year, completing exactly 10 years at the Old Lady of Turin.

“I have made my story at this club. Sooner or later everything has to come to an end,” he said.

“Nothing has changed in my relationship with the club and I’ve never asked to leave.

“My contract has never been a problem. It’s a decision I have taken a little while ago and I will return home with my family.”

The 31-year-old Trezeguet, who is married with two children, did not specify if that would mean the end of his career, or if going home meant to France or Argentina, where he began his football career at Platense.

“I don’t know, now’s not the time to talk about that because we are only at the second match of the season,” he added. “I want to finish my story with Juventus by winning something.”

Trezeguet won two French league titles with Monaco and two Serie A titles — and a Serie B crown — with Juventus.

His best season came in 2002 when Juve were champions and he was named both Player of the Year and Foreign Player of the Year, as well as finishing as the joint top scorer in Serie A.

He also enjoyed success on the international stage, winning the World Cup with France in 1998 and the European Championship two years later.

However, he was part of the Juve team that was stripped of its 2005 and 2006 Scudetto crowns for match-fixing and relegated to Serie B.

Unlike many other big-name players, though, Trezeguet stayed loyal to the team and helped them bounce back up to Serie A at the first attempt.

Now, though, he has been shunted down the striker pecking order behind Amauri, Vincenzo Iaquinta and Alessandro Del Piero.