Francis Roig leaves Nadal's team after 18 years

Francis Roig, a member of Rafael Nadal's coaching staff for 18 years, has decided to leave the Majorcan tennis player's team and embark on a new stage with other professionals.

The 54-year-old coach from Barcelona wants to undertake "a new project that encompasses more than one player" and that allows him to "form a working group for the coming years", as specified in the statement issued this Friday.

Roig has been one of the essential elements in Nadal's career, whom he joined in 2005, when the Spaniard began to really rise on the ATP circuit.

Since then he has been part of the

, made up to this day by him, Carlos Moyà and Marc López, the latter incorporated since last year.

Roig coincided in the initial stage with Toni Nadal, who formally separated from his nephew at the end of 2017.

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After sealing his individual career in 1999 – he became 60th in the world – the Catalan continued as a doubles player and won nine titles.

In 2001 he finally hung up the racket and dedicated himself to training at the BTT Academy in Barcelona;

a task that he combined with advising Nadal, always attentive to the technical guidelines of a well-known trainer on the circuit and who, says the man from Manacor, "improves my tennis".

In the note, the current number two highlights that “Francis has been an important person in my career and I am very grateful to him for all these years of work and friendship.

When we started working together I was a child and together with my uncle Toni, we started on the circuit.

He is a great coach who knows tennis very well and has helped me a lot to get better and better.

I only have words of gratitude and I wish him all the luck in the world in his new project”.

For his part, Roig affirms that “it has been a real pleasure and honor to work with Rafa and the rest of the team.

We never thought we could get so many results and have such a long career with him, but he's a phenomenon and he makes everything look easy.

I only have words of gratitude to Rafa and my teammates for all these years together, learning, working and making him what he is, a sports legend.

Friendship remains and we will see each other and enjoy ourselves, as we have always done, on the circuit”.

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