Aussie legend Kewell announces retirement

Harry Kewell with his wife and kids after announcing his retirement from soccer, in Melbourne yesterday. (EPA)Melbourne: Harry Kewell, Australia’s first world-class footballer, will  call time on his roller-coaster 18-year career when the A-League season ends next month, the 35-year-old said yesterday.The Sydney-born former Leeds United, Liverpool and Galatasaray forward had signed a one-year deal with Melbourne Heart in a bid to play in a third World Cup finals, but has spent much of the 2013-14 season sidelined by injury. “It’s hard. It’s a sport that I’ve only ever known,” he told a media conference in Melbourne accompanied by his English wife and children. “I started when I was four years old, I started professionally when I was 17, I’ve had a career of 18 years, it’s all I’ve known. The way things panned out for me, I felt it was the right time, I could go out on my terms.” Voted Australia’s greatest ever footballer by fans in 2012, Kewell shot to fame with a Premier League debut for Leeds in 1996 as a prodigiously talented 17-year-old and became his country’s youngest international weeks later in a match against Chile. A Champions League trophy with Liverpool and two World Cup appearances in 58 matches for the Socceroos were to follow a glittering 181-game stint for Leeds.“I’ve lived a life, and now I get to live another,” he said.