During the conversation with El Larguero, quoted by Cadena SER, Toni Nadal brought to the fore the logic of power and independence that characterizes the relationship between coaches and professional players as the athlete matures, explaining that even in separations as high in the media as that of Carlos Alcaraz and Juan Carlos Ferrero, the crucial questions, in addition to the sporting results, usually lie in contractual or personal aspects. Based on his experience and observation of the circuit, Nadal insisted that the tennis player is the one who makes the final decisions about his work team, stressing that the separation was unexpected and he does not know the details that motivated it.
As reported by Cadena SER, Toni Nadal explained that Ferrero’s leadership at the helm of the Alcaraz team has achieved excellent results and that, in similar contexts, every relevant decision is made by the athlete. This former coach and role model in Spanish tennis pointed out that the dynamics of a tennis player’s adolescence and early youth usually give the coach a dominant position. However, as the athlete reaches a higher level of autonomy, this imbalance changes until ultimate control lies with the player himself. “The child grows up and stops being a child,” Nadal said, according to the media.
In his analysis, Rafael Nadal’s former coach discussed the usual authority structure in tennis technical teams. He said that in professional practice the coach initially has the power to enforce criteria, but over time the authority is diluted: “The first time you tell him that he is not aligned, the second time you say directly that it is unnecessary,” Nadal explained, according to Cadena SER. He considered that, as in the Alcaraz team, there was no evidence of differences on sporting issues that could justify the recent separation, pointing out that Ferrero knew how to promote the development of his team in different dimensions of the game.
For Toni Nadal, Ferrero’s positive influence was evident in the systematic improvement of Alcaraz, making “Juan Carlos’ demands” one of the key factors in the Murcian’s tennis development. As reported by Cadena SER, Nadal appreciated that the request made by Ferrero served to strengthen various strategic areas in the young man’s professional development. However, he insisted that even under strict guidelines, “the player is in charge, it cannot be otherwise,” reflecting this progressive transition in which the athlete takes over all crucial decisions.
Nadal also described how he accomplished this transit in the case of his nephew and student Rafael Nadal. In the interview, he mentioned that he made strict demands during Rafael’s youth, but decided to give up control when he was eighteen. Quoted by Cadena SER, he said: “Since he was 18, I told him to do whatever he wanted”, clarifying that he limited his intervention to issues of work and attitude on the pitch, but considered that the decisions outside the sports field corresponded to the player himself: “Whether he wanted to go out or not was his problem… On the pitch he helped Rafael; off the pitch it is his decision.”
Toni Nadal shared unique details about his professional relationship with Rafael Nadal and explained to Cadena SER that he never received any fees for his work as a coach as he maintained other family businesses. In his words: “I never got paid by Rafa, but things went well for me because I had deals with my brothers… I spent so much time with him because it was very cheap.
During the dialogue quoted by Cadena SER, Toni Nadal also addressed the natural tensions that arise in the coach-athlete dynamic. He claimed that working with top athletes meant constantly negotiating the sphere of influence and intervention: “Either you are in the player’s hands and don’t say what you think, or you draw a line of demands.” As the coach explained, this tension between autonomy and leadership shapes the common landscape of high performance teams.
Nadal expressed surprise at the termination of the professional relationship between Alcaraz and Ferrero and admitted that he did not know the specific reasons for the distance. After years of observing the sport’s elite, he claimed that this type of separation was usually due to contractual agreements or personal concerns, rather than disagreements related to on-track performance. In his statement published by Cadena SER, he reiterated that the loss of absolute control by the coach is accompanied by the development of judgment and independence of the young athlete, which is ultimately reflected in changes within the group of employees.
Regarding the limits of the coach’s intervention, Nadal told Cadena SER that taking a particular position largely depends on the personality of each coach and the nature of the relationship with the athlete. In his case, he decided not to influence the private lives of his players because he believed that after a certain level of maturity, the non-sports area belonged exclusively to the personal sphere of the athlete.
The process that the team of Carlos Alcaraz and Juan Carlos Ferrero went through, according to the Spanish coach, illustrates the transition in which the athlete himself seeks and assumes greater decision-making capacity over his projection and his professional environment. Toni Nadal, in his contributions collected by Cadena SER, provided keys to the challenges that coaches and tennis players face in managing careers characterized by excellence, constant pressure and the need to balance demand and freedom of choice.
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