Former World No.1 and 2000 Olympics gold medallist Yevgeny Kafelnikov has hinted that Juan Carlos Ferrero\u2019s attempt to separate six-time Grand Slam champion Carlos Alcaraz from fame, and that \u201cgirls\u201d could have played a part in them splitting as a player-coach partnership. The 51-year-old felt that it was \u2018understandable\u2019 to see Alcaraz get a lot of fame and recognition at his age, adding that one could not resist the urge at 22.<\/p>\n
Alcaraz and Ferrero split as a player-coach partnership in December, with the latter stating that disagreement over a new contract between his team and Alcaraz\u2019s team had led to the decision.<\/p>\n
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\u201cKnowing that Juan Carlos is very professional \u2013 he was as a player as well \u2013 I am sure that he wants absolute commitment from his players and that his demands in terms of professionalism are very high. Probably, given that Carlos is Spanish, very young, and attracted to all external temptations\u2026 he has been difficult to work with lately.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s understandable \u2013 he\u2019s 22 years old, all the girls are after him, there\u2019s fame and everything that goes with it. No one could resist at such a young age. Juan Carlos probably saw that and was trying to separate training and tennis from all the noise. This, from my perspective, is probably where the conflict occurred,\u201d Kafelnikov told Sport Club in an interview.<\/p>\n
The Russian hinted that Alcaraz\u2019s father may have had a role in the player splitting with the coach, a few weeks before the start of the new season.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, I have no idea how he will react. But why would you end such a successful collaboration anyway? At least they seemed to be happy\u2026 There was never any sign that they were going to break up \u2013 they were winning slams, they were number one in the world\u2026 I\u2019m sure Carlos\u2019 father has a lot to do with this split, not Carlos himself. We\u2019ll see what happens now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Alcaraz won the French Open and US Open in 2025, splitting the slams with Jannik Sinner, who won the Australian Open and Wimbledon. He has the chance to complete the career slam by winning the 2026 Australian Open, which starts on January 18.<\/p>\n
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\u00a9 The Indian Express Pvt Ltd<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former World No.1 and 2000 Olympics gold medallist Yevgeny Kafelnikov has hinted that Juan Carlos Ferrero\u2019s attempt to…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":485604,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[23874,219462,219464,219463,1466,2604,62,1464,67,132,68,140651],"class_list":{"0":"post-485603","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-alcaraz","9":"tag-alcaraz-coach","10":"tag-alcaraz-ferrero","11":"tag-alcaraz-juan-carlos-ferrero","12":"tag-carlos-alcaraz","13":"tag-juan-carlos-ferrero","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-tennis","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-yevgeny-kafelnikov"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115821957944436932","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485603\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/485604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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