Andrei Arshavin will continue playing football after joining Kazakh outfit Kairat Almaty.
The player has moved into his new club on a one-year contract. He has been searching for a proper home since his release from Zenit St Petersburg last summer. He was playing for the first half of the season with Kuban Krasnodar. However, this contract was concluded on mutual consent due to the player failing to have sufficient fitness. Arshavin is the former record signing of Arsenal, but he has been in a stage of decline for a number of years now.
The player also has immense international experience after having featured in 74 games for Russia while scoring 17 goals in the process. His best achievement with the national team came in the Euro 2008 when he catapulted Russia into the semifinals of the competition. This latter earned him a move to Arsenal where he played for four years. The English club, though, saw the best of the forward in the first two years. During the latter part of his Arsenal days, Arshavin was suffering from numerous injury problems that subsequently led to his exit in 2013.
Since 2013, he has never been at his best. However, Arshavin will hope to extend his playing days by a few more years after having joined his new club. Only recently, the Russian claimed that he will consider retiring from football if he did not find a suitable club before the end of the 2015-16 season. Now that his ambition has been met, it remains to be seen if he can at least come close to the glory days.Kairat Almaty have inserted a clause in his contract that will allow the club to extend his deal by a second-year if he manages to impress in the first year at his new club.