Edin Dzeko will play a 152nd and final match for Bosnia-Herzegovina next month before ending his 19-year international career.
In an emotional post on Instagram, the 40-year-old striker wrote he would be retiring from national team duty after a Nations League qualifier against Sweden in the Bosnian city of Zenica on Oct. 2.
“Now I feel the time has come to step aside,” wrote Dzeko, who played for Bosnia at this year’s World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico. “If I have made it to the age of 40 with the national team it is because I truly gave everything I had. Every time. Everything.”
Dzeko has 73 goals for Bosnia and has often carried the team on his shoulders. He also played, and scored, at the World Cup in 2014 — Bosnia’s first as an independent soccer nation since the former Yugoslavia broke up in regional wars during his childhood.
“I just hope you will be there that night against Sweden, so we can share one more emotion,” Dzeko wrote. “Because every one of these incredible moments has been something we have lived together.
“And that is how I want to experience my final night representing my country: with all of you by my side, wearing the shirt I have loved since I was a boy — and the shirt I will love for the rest of my life.”
Dzeko helped Schalke clinch promotion to the Bundesliga last season and has just signed a one-year deal with the German club.
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The Associated Press
