Berlin (AFP) – Former Germany international striker Kevin Kuranyi said Friday he was calling time on his career despite money-spinning offers to play overseas in Qatar and China.
The 35-year-old, who scored 19 goals in 52 appearances for Germany, had been a free agent since last year after a career spent at clubs including Stuttgart and Schalke 04 in Germany and Russian side Dynamo Moscow.
Kuranyi said on his website he was taking the “difficult” decision to “end his career (despite) financially attractice proposals from Russia, Brazil, Qatar or China”.
“In short, I wanted to continue playing. But not at all costs. And the price of being separated from my family was too high for me,” said Kuryani, who played 150 games in Russia.
“After all these years, it is at least nice not to have the rigid life of a professional any more. A life between training ground, airplane and hotel room,” said the father-of-two.
After his five years in Moscow the Brazil-born striker played a final season in Germany at Hoffenheim, even then explaining he wanted his kids to grow up in Germany.
Kuryani is famous for having stormed out of the dressing room at half-time of a 2010 World Cup qualifier and then failing to show up for the team bus after the game.
Despite apologising he was never again recalled to the national team by Germany coach Joachim Loew.
“It was an extreme situation for me at the time. It was however a mistake I regretted it,” he told SID, an AFP subsidiary.
He also fell out with Loew’s predecessor Juergen Klinsmann, who decided not to select him for the 2006 World Cup in Germany.
The holder of triple nationality — German, Brazilian and Panamanian — Kuranyi started playing as a youngster in the latter two countries before joining Stuttgart in 1997.
He stayed with Stuttgart for eight years before joining Schalke (2005-2010), then Dynamo Moscow (2010-2015), followed by Hoffenheim.
Kuranyi won the German Cup and League Cup with Stuttgart and played 275 Bundesliga games with a return of 111 goals before a switch to Dynamo.
