Roger Federer has announced his retirement today after a legendary tennis career.
The 41-year-old has won 20 grand slam titles, and is generally considered to be one of the greatest tennis players of all time, so he will undoubtedly be a huge loss to the sport after hanging up his racket today.
See below for Federer’s tweet announcing this big news, which has seen tributes pour in from all across the sporting world…
To my tennis family and beyond,
With Love,
Roger pic.twitter.com/1UISwK1NIN— Roger Federer (@rogerfederer) September 15, 2022
As strange as it sounds, could Federer’s next move be into a role in football?
The Swiss is well known to be a big fan of FC Basel, and according to a recent report from the Daily Express, he was at one point approached to become the club’s president, and could be lured into a director role once he retires from playing.
Well, now Federer could be free for such a role, and it would be interesting to see what he could achieve if he explored that slightly different career path.
As much as Federer will now always be associated with tennis after his remarkable achievements in the game, it’s also been reported, as per Tennis World USA, that he also could have become a footballer when he was younger.
“I had to sort of take a decision, soccer or tennis. It was quite easy to be honest, I was successful in soccer, but it doesn’t go at the pace as tennis goes, soccer takes many more years,” he said.
“Tennis, I like that I was the one to blame if I lost. Soccer, I was always the bad loser, sometimes I could not believe we lost, and that’s not Fair. I need to blame myself if I lost. Then of course I chose tennis.”
Federer will surely have no regrets over that decision, and while it’s too late for him to become a football player, perhaps we could be seeing him at Basel in the near future.