Rafa Nadal will not play anymore this season: "I've been suffering more than I should with my foot for a year"

After being forced to give up playing at Wimbledon and the Tokyo Olympics, Rafa Nadal announced this Friday through a video posted on his social networks that he will not be able to be in the next US Open either and that he is ending the course due to an injury to his left foot: “Unfortunately, I have to end the 2021 season. Honestly, I have been suffering a lot more than I should with my foot for a year and I need to take some time.

I think it is the way to try to recover, and recover well.

It is a year that I have missed things that matter a lot to me, like Wimbledon, the Olympics, the US Open, ”he says in the statement.

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In the video, Nadal recalls the origin of the problem that has been torturing him for most of the course: “It is not a new injury. It is an injury that I have had since 2005 and that has not prevented me from developing my sports career all these years, but I have been a season in which things are not going as they should ”. Then doctors diagnosed him with scaphoid osteochondritis or Müller-Weiss disease, a degenerative lesion on his left foot that weakens the bone and the talo-scaphoid joint. For some months, there was fear for his career, but thanks to orthopedic insoles that improved support and reduced stress, occasional infiltrations and his own resistance to pain, the tennis player continued on and in these 16 years he has raised 20 Grand Slam, in direct competition with Roger Federer, who also has 20.

With the Spanish out for the remainder of 2021 and the Swiss back to the operating room, the way is clear for the next US Open, which begins on August 30, to be overtaken by Novak Djokovic, who in the past Wimbledon equaled them to 20 grand.

But Nadal needed a break: “Given that this year I have not had the ability to train and compete in the way I really like to do it, I come to the conclusion that what I need is some time to recover. Change a series of things, try to understand what has been the evolution of the foot in recent times, "he explains. “You have to look for a slightly different type of treatment to try to find solutions to this problem or, at least, improve it, in order to have options for the next few years. I am with the maximum enthusiasm and predisposition to do whatever it takes to recover the best possible form, to continue competing for the things that really motivate me, and the things that I have done over the years. I am convinced that with the recovery of the foot and a daily effort this can be achieved ”.

The video concludes with a note of hope from the Spanish tennis player, now number four in the world in the

ATP

ranking: "I promise that what I am going to do is work hard to continue enjoying this sport for a while longer," he says.

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