Sergio Agüero proud of stellar career and content now is his time to live

Striker’s blockbuster title-winning goal for Manchester City stands out but 18 years among the elite tells the fuller story

For Sergio Leonel Agüero del Castillo an enforced retirement because of a heart condition provoked tears on Wednesday, but friends of the 33-year-old say he has also come to feel serene that a stellar 18-year career is over.

The former Barcelona forward is understood over recent days to have been zen-like in his take on his playing days ending, telling associates that “things happen in life and it is time to live”. Away from the strictures of the athlete’s diet Agüero can embrace his love of asado, the Argentine barbecue that grills choice cuts of steak, chorizo, chicken and other meat, and attend more concerts of his friend Maluma, a Colombian musician.

Related: ‘A very difficult moment’: tearful Sergio Agüero confirms retirement

In despair, initially, when he realised the chest pain and difficult breathing experienced in October’s draw with Alavés pointed to a serious issue that could not be ignored, Agüero’s mood then turned to a joy caused by all he has achieved. Even amid the raw emotion of his farewell Camp Nou press conference he referenced the happiness he feels, and it is easy to understand why.

Agüero’s has been one of this generation’s great careers. For a start, consider again the sheer number of seasons the boy from Buenos Aires has been a footballer: 18. This is a phenomenal stretch at any level. For Agüero, though, all have been in the rarefied air of the elite.

Just over a month after his 15th birthday he became Argentina’s youngest top-flight debutant when pulling on the shirt of his beloved Independiente, one of the Primera División’s “big five”. Agüero’s international bow came at 18 in September 2006, against Brazil, the year he moved to Atlético Madrid. He spent five seasons there, winning the 2010 Europa League and Uefa Super Cup before a transfer to Manchester City the next summer that transformed his career and led to him giving the Premier League its blockbuster moment.

This occurred in May 2012, on the final day of the season, when City hosted QPR having to match Manchester United’s result at Sunderland to become champions for the first time since 1968. By the 93rd minute disaster seemed the only outcome. United had beaten Sunderland 1-0 and a tentative City were drawing with 10-man QPR. Being at the Etihad Stadium to witness what Agüero did next was among this writer’s most chaotic, surreal, life-affirming, sheer what-the-hell moments in two decades of covering sport around the world.

The venue had been emptying but after Edin Dzeko’s 92nd-minute equaliser City fans had a renewed faith which was to be repaid in the kind of moment only sport’s theatre can occasionally provide. Mario Balotelli slid the ball to Agüero, whose tally in a debut Premier League season was 22 goals. The 23-year-old was about to score the goal of his career.

Martin Tyler, on commentary for Sky Sports, had branded the City-United shootout as “truth more gripping than fiction”. It turned out that was underselling it.

But, rewind. Before Balotelli receives the ball guess who starts the move he is to finish? Yes, “Kun” Agüero (the moniker from a childhood mispronunciation of his favourite cartoon) has dropped deep to collect possession and find the Italian who waits as the Argentinian curves right, into the area, before completing the one-two. Now, Agüero, ice-cold, leaves Taye Taiwo a spectator with a mesmeric body swerve and smashes a seismic winner past Paddy Kenny in the QPR goal to mainline ecstasy through City supporters, cause torment for all of a United persuasion and create the Premier League’s defining before and after act.

There will be an appearance from Liam Gallagher in the media room later when the former Oasis frontman and City fanatic, drunk on the win and something more liquid-based, enters to share his bonhomie. Before this, though, back on the pitch, Agüero is wheeling away in celebration, City shirt off, spinning deliriously, having seized an undeniable slice of immortality as the creator of a moment that will be replayed endlessly.

As impressive, then, was what followed. There is no complacency. The first league title Agüero claimed on the sun-honeyed Manchester day was the launchpad for stratospheric achievement. There are four more English championships. There is an FA Cup. Six League Cups. There is, too, the despair of May’s Champions League final defeat by Chelsea, after the heartache of losing the 2014 World Cup showpiece to Germany. Agüero, whose son Benjamin’s grandfather is the late Diego Maradona, is City’s record scorer with 260 goals in 390 appearances, 184 of these in the league, the last two in a fairytale domestic bow. On as a substitute against Everton, Agüero again sent the adoring congregation ballistic by scoring twice.

Yet during the midpoint of all of this, when Pep Guardiola became City manager in 2016, Agüero had to convince that he could fit the Catalan’s high-press style. Agüero, who endured an uneven relationship with Guardiola, met the challenge, with the latter deserving credit for evolving the centre-forward’s game in the five years before Agüero left for Barcelona.

A free transfer, Agüero scored once in five appearances, in the 2-1 defeat by Real Madrid on 24 October, before the heart condition that has brought an abrupt close to his playing career.

Agüero always played with a cheeky grin and an endearing nonchalance. This best friend of Lionel Messi ended at City with that Champions League defeat by Chelsea but he departed the international arena at the pinnacle as part of Argentina’s triumphant Copa América squad in July. Despite not featuring in that final the triumph is among his most cherished achievements.

His final goal, against Real, bookended the first, versus Estudiantes de La Plata. “I was 16,” he told the Guardian in 2013. “I received the ball on the edge of the area, controlled with the left and moved to the right side and hit it hard and it went on the left side of the goalkeeper.”

Grace and menace from start to finish. Agüero departs as what he has always been: a winner.