"Working with Zverev was not easy for me" says Juan Carlos Ferrero on difference between Alexander Zverev and Carlos Alcaraz

Juan Carlos Ferrero commented on the differences between coaching Carlos Alcaraz and his former protege Alexander Zverev. The Spaniard began working with 'Sascha' in July 2017 when the German was the world No. 11 at 20 years old. Their collaboration lasted only 7 months as they decided to part ways in February 2018 due to alleged differences between them.

In 2019, Ferrero started coaching the 16-year-old Carlos Alcaraz, a promising junior talent, and has been with him throughout his early career. Ferrero emphasized in 2022: “I know I needed something like that (working with Alcaraz) because working with Zverev was not easy for me,” he told Eurosport.

“It is not the same culture and he understands in a slightly different way what it means to be professional. He needed to reset a bit and work with someone who had the same character as me and who wanted the same for the future and I think I found that in Carlos.”

Ferrero responded to an interview with the Spanish newspaper La Nación and mentioned the satisfaction he feels coaching Alcaraz: “Here there was a big change: when I was training Zverev and I left him to train Carlos, Zverev was 5th in the world, he was a very mature player, even though he is young,” he said.

“I found myself with few possibilities to change certain things that, in my opinion, I needed [for Zverev] to be a better professional and continue improving. He thought other things… Very well, we have come this far.

“And with Carlos, I was able to cook a player who already obviously had impressive characteristics, with a dynamism that at 15 years old is seen very little, but that had to be ordered, polished, manufactured.

“I think that, between the family and the team… his father (Carlos Alcaraz Gonzalez) is an expert in the world of tennis, he has been a tennis player and he did well to know how to surround himself with people with experience.

“We have been able, together, to remove a player who had it inside him. He still has many things to improve, but for being twenty years old. It’s impossible that he doesn’t have things to improve.”

Ferrero also highlighted the fact that Alcaraz comes from a quiet town like El Palmar in southern Spain, where around 23,000 people live: “Yes, for me that is important. When you are from a city where you have many distractions, it is very easy to lose your way a little,” Ferrero said.

“When you come from a family like his, of athletes, and you live in a place where the atmosphere is full of sports, a small place, it helps. The example I had with myself was like this. I was in a place with 40,000 inhabitants, small, quiet, but that helped me to be calm in the academy, training,” former French Open champion added.

“Not being the focus of attention, that if you go out to dinner they will take a photo, in the magazines of this or that, the disco very close at hand, many distractions — and I think that helps him,” Ferrero concluded.