Saturday, December 20, 2025, 7:15 p.m.
When Juan Carlos Ferrero arrived one morning last August at the covered court that the Alcaraz family had built in record time in a warehouse near the Real Sociedad Club de Campo de Murcia, in El Palmar, he grimaced. He didn’t like it at all. It had been released in a hurry so that the world number one could prepare there for the fall indoor tour.
We were in summer and the tension between Ferrero and Alcaraz’s father was already very evident. And it wasn’t new. The first major crash occurred in 2023, when the Onteniente coach decided – without consulting anyone – that he was not going to travel with Carlitos to the dirt tour of South America and sent the veteran Antonio Martínez Cascales, who was his coach and who took him from the slopes of Villena to number one in the world.
Despite that discussion, Ferrero did not change his way of acting and in the following two seasons he was absent from several tournaments, including some Masters 1000 such as the one in Cincinnati or Monte Carlo, delegating to Samuel López, a coach he trusted and who is now going to replace him full-time.
Alcaraz’s father – nor other members of his team – could not understand why Ferrero skipped so many trips. It is true that Carlitos’ former coach always claimed that he has three children, a wife and an academy to attend to in Villena, but the reality is that in all the tournaments all the tennis players in the Top 20 are always accompanied by their coach, from Sinner to Mensik, passing through Zverev, Djokovic (when he had one), Aliassime, Fritz, Musetti, Shelton, Draper, Ruud, Medveded, Davidovich, Rublev, De Miñaur and company.
Too many absences
It was a tremendous anomaly on the circuit that the world number one, the most iconic player of the moment and the one who is taking tennis to a new dimension after the end of the ‘Big Three’, often appeared in tournaments without his ‘head coach’. Alcaraz’s father was not at all comfortable with that dynamic established by Ferrero and did not want this to continue happening in 2026.
Those who have been closest to the Alcaraz team in recent months say that the last unpleasant episode happened on October 28 at the Paris Masters 1000. The six-time Grand Slam champion was eliminated in the first round, surprisingly, against Cameron Norrie. This ended a streak of 17 consecutive victories for the El Palmar player. And Ferrero’s haste to quickly leave the La Defense facilities, where this year the tournament previously known as Paris Bercy was held, greatly shocked the rest of the expedition that accompanied the Murcian tennis player in the French capital.
What he had to do at that moment, according to the player’s environment, was to analyze that defeat well, be close to Alcaraz and raise his spirits in the face of the imminent ATP Finals in Turin, but Ferrero took the first flight to Alicante and returned home. The relationship between coach and pupil had changed a lot and, although Alcaraz’s family is very grateful for everything Ferrero has done for Carlitos since he started working with him when he was 15, the feeling they had in the player’s environment is that the time had come to put an end to this stage and start a new one, just when Alcaraz had closed his best year and had regained number one.
The contract
Although many have suggested that the breakup comes for economic reasons and that everything was precipitated last weekend, the truth is that this divorce has been simmering and money has not been the main reason for the separation. Ferrero’s new contract has not been decisive for everything to have ended just before the start of the preseason. The fixed rate and the percentages could have been negotiated. And it hasn’t even been done.
For Alcaraz, it has long been non-negotiable to train at home, at his family’s club, and spend the little free time he has in Murcia with his family. He made it clear a couple of years ago that he would no longer go to Villena. And yet, what Ferrero intended was for his academy to continue to be the reference work center for the world number one.
There was a more than evident clash of interests when the El Palmar club began to grow. Just 115 kilometers from Villena, where the Ferrero academy was resurgent in the heat of Alcaraz’s successes, the Alcaraz family soon became clear that they had to take advantage of Carlitos’ pull to turn the old El Palmar club into a world-famous academy. The Alcaraz Academy was born, the facilities were renovated and the Ferrero school lost all media focus.
