The connection between Rafael Nadal and Mexico will reach an important point next November when he plays an exhibition match at CDMX’s Monumental Plaza de Toros. Just as the Swiss tennis player Roger Federer did a couple of seasons ago, now it will be the Spaniard who will play an exhibition game in the impressive venue in the Mexican capital.
The rival will be nothing more and nothing less than the Norwegian Casper Ruud, whom he faced a few months ago in the Roland Garros final. In other words, Mexican fans will be able to enjoy the show that two of today’s best tennis players can offer , more precisely, the numbers two and three in the world.
The company “Team8”, which in 2019 made an exhibition tour with its representative Roger Federer and the German Alexander Zverev, will try to repeat the formula with confirmed matches in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and now Mexico.
The date is yet to be revealed, but the tour would start at the end of November in South America, leaving the country’s capital as the fifth stop. Rafa Nadal has become the favorite player of the Mexican fans. In his participation in the Acapulco Open , he has already managed to be crowned four times to equal David Ferrer as the top winners of the best tennis tournament in Latin America.
It should be noted that in the Federer-Zverev exhibition, the Mexican public set a new Guinness record for the most fans in a tennis match with 42,517 attendees, which was broken months later by Federer and Nadal himself in another exhibition in South Africa.
Eala pays tribute to Nadal
2022 US Open girls’ singles champion Alexandra Eala recently revealed that Rafael Nadal is her idol and hailed his fighting spirit. “Well, I think my idol is obviously Rafa. But I’m not just saying that because I’m in his structure ( laughter).
No, he’s a very good role model, something a lot of people should idolize and try to be. I won a tournament a couple years ago, maybe three years ago, in France. The structure reached out to my parents. After a while, long discussions, we decided that I would be based there,” Eala said.
“The biggest thing I notice in Rafa is how he fights till the end, how his thoughts are so clear. He’s so calm, but at the same time so fired up. I think I really tried to channel that energy during this whole week. That’s also what I tried to show, people who look up to me, is to think with a clear head and to not act irrationally,” Eala added.