His schoolmates called him pichichi. The top scorer. He scored with both feet, juggled the ball on his instep like Ronaldinho; sliced the ball from outside of his boot; conjured goals from the back-heel. He told his coach: “I want to quit tennis and play futsal.” He told the coach that tennis’s lonely pursuit bored him. In the five-a-side football played on a court somewhere between a basketball court and a handball court, he was not alone. But his father, a former national player and a tennis coach cajoled him back to tennis, a family lineage. Ten years later, he is the best tennis player in the world, and when he retires, he could waltz into the rarefied space of the greats. That boy is Carlos Alcaraz.
Had fate smiled differently, he would have been a futsal great, though anonymous, playing amateur tournaments in Spain for fun. Then, had destiny winked differently, the greatest Spaniard to have ever picked up a tennis racquet, and one of the greatest of all time, would not have existed. Growing up in the Nadal household, he had two sporting inspirations, both his uncles. Toni, a failed tennis player and his younger brother Miguel, a football legend with Barcelona and Mallorca. Endowed with an imposing figure and sometimes a drooping moustache, he was called the Butcher of Barcelona, even though in classical Cruyffian essence, he was a refined goal-scoring defender. As a child, his nephew was a promising striker for his boyhood club, before the racquet lured his heart away. The first time Rafa Nadal appeared on television was after a football game, Miguel holding a demurring boy in his arms during a post-match interview.
But football didn’t fully leave Nadal and Alcaraz, demarcated by generations, bound by the same quest for tennis greatness and love for football. Both follow Real Madrid, both have close friends in the team. Nadal counted among his friends Iker Casillas, Sergio Ramos and Cristiano Ronaldo. Some day, he had once told Spanish media, in half jest, that he wants to succeed Florentino Perez as the world’s richest club’s president. He watched every game of Spain in the 2010 World Cup and was part of the victory celebrations on the podium. He turns up for charity matches, and once belted six goals past Casillas in an exhibition game on a small ground. En route to the first goal, he elegantly nutmegged Ramos, before evading his recovery tackle with a cute pirouette, before he lashed a pile-driver past a diving Casillas.
Alcaraz is prone to flaunting his juggle-acts on the court too. In a video that went viral last year, he is shown performing kick-ups with a tennis ball for close to nine seconds without the ball touching the ground. His sprints too are like a footballer’s, with an explosive first step. He then dances with small, decisive strides to get just the right distance from the ball. Even when he is in the middle of a Grand Slam, he follows Spain and Madrid. After a gruelling five-set victory over Frances Tiafoe in the third round of Wimbledon 2024, he asked an on-court interviewer: “How is the score? How is the score?”
Wrapping up the formality, he rushed for an ice bath with his phone in tow. He kept the media waiting for an hour, and apologised sheepishly: “I was with my mobile phone, cheering on Spain in any way we could. I was there trying not to get my phone wet, but I couldn’t miss Spain, I couldn’t miss Spain.” Spain was locked in a Euro quarterfinal against Germany, which they won in extra time. During the half-time of the game, his close Madrid pal, Alvaro, was overheard asking the crowd whether they knew the score of the Wimbledon game his friend was playing. That game led to a pact between Morata and Alcaraz, because they noticed that whenever they had spoken before the game, they had won the game. “He told me, ‘OK, I’m going to talk to you because every time that we spoke, we won’. It’s kind of lucky,” Alcaraz later said.
The love and respect are mutual. Just as Alcaraz and Nadal attend football games, so do the Spanish and Madrid footballers. Morata left Madrid a while ago, but he still travels to watch Alcaraz. So do Madrid defenders Dani Carvajal and Nacho, just as Ramos landed in Paris to cheer for Nadal.
In a sense, their era of superiority ran parallel. Just when Spain became the world’s best team, the peak ran from 2008 to 2014, as did Nadal’s. The year Spain ended their continental trophy drought, Nadal toppled Roger Federer in an epic clash to win his first Wimbledon. The year Spain became world champions, Nadal hoisted his first US Open. The tiki-taka empire began to dissolve in 2014, before Spain became a force again post the pandemic. Or rather, just around the time Alcaraz burst forth with a lassoing forehand like Nadal. It was Xavi then, and Lamine Yamal now; it was Nadal then and Alcaraz now. Had destiny smiled differently on Nadal and Alcaraz, they wouldn’t have been footballers. It didn’t, but football didn’t leave them. And the story of Nadal and Alcaraz’s world domination would run parallel to Spain’s supremacy in football.
