Including that stint in the Premier League with West Ham United and Stoke City, the well-travelled Marko Arnautovic has led the line for six different clubs in four different countries during a nomadic playing career.
But will he add a seventh club and a fifth nation to his collection before all the sand reaches the bottom half of the timer?
While his announcement was understandably overshadowed by the shock departure of talismanic head coach Simone Inzaghi to Saudi Arabian football, Marko Arnautovic confirmed his own Inter Milan departure in the aftermath of that 5-0 Champions League final drubbing by Paris Saint-Germain in Munich.
“I am leaving Inter as free agent,” the former West Ham United frontman said in his typically forthright style. “I won’t be part of their squad anymore.”
Despite turning 36 in April, the veteran still made 28 appearances last season for the Serie A runners-up and Champions League finalists. And with that extraordinary Coppa Italia volley against Lazio fresh in the memory, Marko Arnautovic rightly has no intention of hanging up his boots just yet.
Not with a World Cup itch needing to be scratched.
Rapid Vienna move ruled out for former West Ham United ace Marko Arnautovic
Arnautovic has earned 125 caps for Austria. The country’s all-time record appearance maker is missing a World Cup appearance from his CV. That, though, is something he plans to change.
So with one eye firmly fixed on the summer of 2026, Arnautovic’s next club must be one capable of keeping him fit and fresh enough for one last stab at the biggest prize in football.
“As a team, we’ve participated in the Euros three times,” the former Werder Bremen, Shanghai SIPG and Stoke City attacker says. “But never in a World Cup.
“Participating in one is a personal goal of mine because, after the World Cup, it will be over for me.”
The team Arnautovic joins next, then, might very well be his last in professional football. Last chance saloon territory. No wonder the veteran is taking his time to pick his poison.
Marc Janko, a former teammate of his for FC Twente and with the Austrian national team, believes Arnautovic could end up in Saudi Arabia or Serbia. Red Star Belgrade have been heavily linked.
And one suspects that – unless it proves to be a metaphorical ‘menthol meet Pepsi situation’ – a striker who tends to make headlines for a wide variety of reasons could prove to be a pretty good fit among the flares and the fierce intensity of Belgrade.
But if a maiden World Cup outing remains a dream to tick off his personal bucket list, Arnautovic appears to have much less interest in representing a club back in his homeland of Austria. The Vienna-born attacker has never played a senior match in the Austrian Bundesliga, instead making his professional debut in the Netherlands with FC Twente.
That appears unlikely to change, either. Especially now that Steffen Hofmann, the managing director of Rapid Vienna, has ruled out bringing Arnautovic back to the city of his birth.
“No, there was no meeting [with Arnautovic],” Hofmann tells Laola 1, dispelling claims made in the media a few days prior. “I find it very difficult to imagine Marko coming to us.
“It would be a cool story, of course, but I think it will be very difficult.”
Arnautovic tips Inter Milan to reclaim Serie A title from Napoli
Arnautovic, for what it’s worth, said not so long ago that he had absolutely no intention of representing a club in Austria during the dying embers of a broad and often contentious playing career.
Hofmann’s denial appears to draw a firm line through any lingering speculation.
West Ham’s Player of the Year back in 2018, Arnautovic won five trophies during two spells in the blue and black of Inter Milan.
“My time at Inter is over,” Arnautovic said while backing the Nerazzurri to bounce back from last season’s disappointment under Inzaghi’s replacement, Christian Chivu.
“I won’t be there any more. I wish Chivu all the best and I believe that next season they will be champions.”
