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Fro The Athletic: " Diego Forlan: The ex-Man Utd and Uruguay footballer playing ITF tour tennis at 45
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Excerpts:
Tactics:
"“I said to my coach, ‘You need to understand that my whole life, if I get any small gap to shoot, I would do it quickly’,” he says. “In tennis, it’s about waiting for the right ball. When I started, I was hitting every ball. I was losing many matches — it didn’t matter if I was in the right position, I was just looking for the gap on the other side. My opponents would hit balls really hard near the baseline, and I would have about a five per cent chance of hitting a winner, but it didn’t matter, I would still go for it.”
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"Diego Forlan, the former Uruguay, Manchester United and Atletico Madrid striker, is recalling one of the most high-pressure experiences of his career. It came when he was at United — but it happened on the tennis court, not the football pitch."
"Forlan fancied a hit and he was challenged by one of his United team-mates, Netherlands international striker Ruud van Nistelrooy. The whole squad, which featured the likes of Rio Ferdinand, Gary Neville and Paul Scholes, gathered to watch, alongside their manager Sir Alex Ferguson, who, as the story goes, put money on Forlan winning, knowing of his tennis background.
“Everyone just expected me to win, but the pressure was on and nobody knew that inside I was thinking, ‘I have to win!’,” Forlan says now, laughing at the memory. “I was better than Ruud, but you could see that he used to play when he was a kid.
“Sir Alex said, ‘I go for Diego’. He was cheering for me.
“We just played a tiebreak, and I won. It was a relief, because a tiebreak is like a penalty shootout. You can lose sometimes when you don’t really deserve to because it can be one point only that decides it.”
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{Paid sub, accessible with New York Times subscription _
Excerpts:
Tactics:
"“I said to my coach, ‘You need to understand that my whole life, if I get any small gap to shoot, I would do it quickly’,” he says. “In tennis, it’s about waiting for the right ball. When I started, I was hitting every ball. I was losing many matches — it didn’t matter if I was in the right position, I was just looking for the gap on the other side. My opponents would hit balls really hard near the baseline, and I would have about a five per cent chance of hitting a winner, but it didn’t matter, I would still go for it.”
~~~~~~~~~~~
"Diego Forlan, the former Uruguay, Manchester United and Atletico Madrid striker, is recalling one of the most high-pressure experiences of his career. It came when he was at United — but it happened on the tennis court, not the football pitch."
"Forlan fancied a hit and he was challenged by one of his United team-mates, Netherlands international striker Ruud van Nistelrooy. The whole squad, which featured the likes of Rio Ferdinand, Gary Neville and Paul Scholes, gathered to watch, alongside their manager Sir Alex Ferguson, who, as the story goes, put money on Forlan winning, knowing of his tennis background.
“Everyone just expected me to win, but the pressure was on and nobody knew that inside I was thinking, ‘I have to win!’,” Forlan says now, laughing at the memory. “I was better than Ruud, but you could see that he used to play when he was a kid.
“Sir Alex said, ‘I go for Diego’. He was cheering for me.
“We just played a tiebreak, and I won. It was a relief, because a tiebreak is like a penalty shootout. You can lose sometimes when you don’t really deserve to because it can be one point only that decides it.”
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