Argentine club Boca Juniors have signed Italian veteran midfielder Daniele De Rossi, the club announced on Thursday.
The Italian World Cup winner, 36, left the Serie A giants at the end of last season, having spent his whole professional career with them.
He scored 63 goals in 616 appearances – only Francesco Totti, with 768, has played more games for Roma.
De Rossi rejected the chance to move into a director’s role saying that he “still feels like a player” and wanted to pursue “a new adventure” elsewhere.
He played 117 matches for Italy, winning the World Cup in 2006.
Boca posted a video of De Rossi on Twitter with the message: “He is at La Boca!”
¡Ya está en La Boca! pic.twitter.com/h2G3PPrRBi
— Boca Jrs. Oficial (@BocaJrsOficial) July 25, 2019
A World Cup winner with Italy in 2006, De Rossi was given a hero’s welcome by a group of screaming Boca fans, who chanted a song in his honour as he landed at Buenos Aires airport in the early hours of Thursday.
Boca coach Gustavo Alfaro spoke with great enthusiasm about the addition of a player of De Rossi’s calibre. De Rossi, who earned 117 caps for Italy, scored 63 goals in 616 appearances for Roma.
? ¡Como en casa! pic.twitter.com/7JJ8UQZWEz
— Boca Jrs. Oficial (@BocaJrsOficial) July 25, 2019
“He will bring experience and hierarchy,” Alfaro said in a news conference on Wednesday..”We want him to provide his hunger to win. He will arrive on Thursday and we will see how he is physically.
“We are adding a player that has a huge career and we want him to be one more in this group, that he dreams of winning everything with Boca.”
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