A sashay into a Marseille turn past a bewildered defender, capped with a nonchalant left-footed finish past Iker Casillas at the near post.
This is not the work of Lionel Messi in any given El Clasico. It’s Rafael Nadal, the 22-time Grand Slam champion who retired from tennis at the Davis Cup this November. Nadal scored six goals against Real Madrid legend and Spain captain Casillas in a charity match organized by the Red Cross in 2007 — the year before Nadal’s first Wimbledon title and the men’s European Championship trophy that would assert Spain’s dominance in world football for the next four years, in the first of many glorious summers for Nadal and La Roja.
“Rafa is part of us, he is part of the history of Spain,” Casillas said in an interview with The Athletic.
Tennis is not typically a sport of national pride. Its biggest prizes are won individually and its rivalries are figured in game styles and psychologies rather than geographies and geopolitics. But Nadal — the avowed Madridista from Manacor who dreams of being Real Madrid president and who traveled to South Africa to support his nation in the 2010 men’s World Cup final — has been perhaps its greatest sporting avatar in one of its most successful eras.
Alejandro Blanco, the president of the Spanish Olympic Committee, who also spoke to The Athletic, said Nadal is “the sportsman who has had the greatest impact throughout history”.
Rafael Nadal’s sporting story is a forking path of two uncles. One is Toni, who coached him on the tennis court from age three and let him know that hitting two-handed forehands wasn’t going to cut it. Nadal, a natural right-hander, switched to playing tennis left-handed and the rest is the lassoing forehand of history.
But watching him dispatch six past Casillas, it becomes clear that he is just as ambidextrous with his feet. It’s his other uncle, Miguel Angel Nadal, who played for RCD Mallorca, Barcelona, and the Spanish national team, who nearly inspired him to play professional football. Instead, in 1998, Nadal won an international under-12 tournament in Auray, France (beating Andy Murray’s brother Jamie), and despite a serious case of World Cup fever, decided to commit to tennis. The first images of Rafael on television came not on the tennis court but in the aftermath of a football match, with Miguel Angel hoisting him into the air during a post-match interview while playing for Mallorca.
In the wake of Nadal’s retirement, Spanish managers in the English Premier League reflected on his proximity to football. West Ham manager Julen Lopetegui, who played alongside Miguel Angel at Barcelona, said he uses Rafael as an inspiration to his players when there are setbacks on the pitch.
“Rafael is one of the best examples of what it takes to be the best athlete in the world,” he said in a news conference ahead of his team’s fixture away to Newcastle United on Monday night.
Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta echoed his view. “Whether you’re a tennis fan or not a tennis fan — the way he acts, the way he behaves, the way he wins, and especially the way he’s lost, the way he has dealt with the difficulties in life, is just an inspiration,” Arteta said ahead of Arsenal’s 3-0 win over Nottingham Forest on Saturday.
Despite Miguel Angel’s journey from Mallorca, where Rafael grew up and learned to play tennis, to Barcelona, his nephew stuck fast to the ways of his father and the rest of his family in supporting Real Madrid, as does four-time major winner and heir to Spain’s men’s tennis legacy Carlos Alcaraz. He has spoken many times of his desire to succeed Florentino Perez as president of Real Madrid at some point in his retirement. Senior sources at Real Madrid — who have immense respect and regard for Nadal — currently regard the idea as closer to dream than reality.
Club affinity does not define Nadal’s connection to Spanish football. As well as supporting Real’s city rivals Atletico during their Europa League semifinal against Arsenal in 2018, he accompanied La Roja to the 2010 men’s World Cup final, celebrating the 1-0 extra-time win with a painted face and his hands on the Jules Rimet trophy alongside Casillas. The scorer of the winning goal (and another Barcelona, not Real Madrid legend) Andres Iniesta told The Athletic that Nadal exemplifies sporting greatness.
“We can only congratulate him for his spectacular career and for the legacy and values he leaves us,” Iniesta said.
Jose Manuel Rodriguez Uribes, the secretary of state for sport who awarded Nadal the Gran Cruz de la Real Orden del Merito Deportivo (Grand Cross of the Royal Order of Sporting Merit) in 2020, also focused on Nadal’s values when asked about his contribution to Spanish sport.
“Rafa Nadal has undoubtedly been a hero of flesh and blood,” he told The Athletic.
“Undoubtedly the best sportsman in our history.”
Casillas and Nadal with Princess Letizia of Spain in 2010 (Spanish Royal Press Dept / Getty Images)
The adulation for Nadal not just as a sporting great, but as a Spanish great, in part explains the strength of feeling in the wake of his farewell. Toni Nadal, Carlos Moya, his coach, and David Ferrer, Spain’s Davis Cup captain, have all expressed displeasure at the scope of the presentation at the Davis Cup. Many of Nadal’s rivals, including Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer and Andy Murray, were all absent as Spain lost to the Netherlands in Malaga, some of them having planned to arrive for Friday, when Spain would have played a semifinal.
“Very important people were missing,” Ferrer told El Partidazo de Cope.
“The farewell was a bit scruffy and shabby,” Moya told Onda Cero.
Davis Cup tournament director Feliciano Lopez, who played alongside Nadal at the 2004 Davis Cup that announced him to the sporting world, preferred to focus on Nadal choosing the tournament to end his career over the nature of the ceremony that played him out.
“We did our best,” he said in a closing news conference.
Nadal’s transcendence of tennis may simply mean that a farewell to Spanish sport will never stand up to the scope of his achievements. Ona Carbonell, a friend of Nadal who won two Olympic medals in synchronized swimming as well as 23 world championship medals in the discipline, regards his importance to the country as far surpassing his on-court record — especially as an individual athlete in a nation most renowned for its teams’ accomplishments.
“Any day that you feel bad, that you are not at 100 percent, you don’t have a substitute or a reserve,” she told The Athletic.
“Rafa has changed the image of our country’s sportsmen and women in this respect.”
Carlos Sainz Sr, the two-time world rally champion and four-time Dakar rally winner, and Olympic badminton gold medalist Carolina Marin offered similar sentiments.
“I didn’t have any reference points because my sport is unknown and very much a minority sport. For me, Rafa has been a mirror in which to look at myself because of what he shows on the court,” Marin said.
In 2010, after Spain’s World Cup triumph, Nike wanted to record an advert. Nadal, Iniesta and basketball player Pau Gasol — who Nadal sought out in the crowd for a hug after winning the 2012 French Open — listed the country’s sporting achievements, from individuals to club teams to the World Cup-winning men’s football team.
Against a reverberating Spanish guitar, Nadal delivered the final line.
“Lucha contra la oscuridad. Ser la luz que dicen que hemos perdido.”
Fight against the darkness. Be the light that they say we have lost.
Nadal embodied this more than Spain could have dreamed. “There is never a feeling that Rafa loses,” Blanco said.
Even now.
(Additional reporting: Charlie Eccleshare, Jordan Campbell and Roshane Thomas)
(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Dan Goldfarb)
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