With the world enthralled by the World Cup right now, let’s take a look at what stars Stateside could be playing one of racketlon’s racket sports if things had gone a bit differently. And, who knows, maybe in retirement they can be coaxed to a racketlon tournament!
Table tennis is by far the most popular of the four among footballers, with a long storied connection. Table tennis tables are standard fixtures in training grounds, team hotels and sports clubs – inexpensive but intensely competitive, and without as much exertion or risk of injury as the other three racketlon disciplines.
Haaland, lighting up the World Cup for Norway at the moment, is a keen table tennis player. On a recent segment of James Corden’s FIFA World Cup 2026 on Fox – After Hours, the pair competed at a series of challenges, such as chess (Haaland is also a keen player of chess), cake decorating, and a reaction test, to see if they could find any cracks in Haaland’s aura of invincibility.
But for the table tennis Corden feigned injury and brought in Cadet national champion and multiple WTT medallist Dimitar Dimitrov to ‘play for him’.
Dimitar says, “The skit was like ‘a giant Norwegian plays against a tiny kid and the tiny kid absolutely destroys the giant guy’. That was the joke.”
“I went into the game knowing that he had some good coordination, but it still surprised me he could return a few balls and he could read the spin. It’s probably a bit late for him to start, but he could reach a solid level.” (he TT starts just after two minutes in on the video below.)
I think he is being a bit nice, because, to be frank, I doubt Haaland would cope too well in racketlon TT (what a loss for him I’m sure…). But two that could definitely hold their own in a C category, perhaps even a B, of an international tournament are France’s Michael Olise and England’s Eberichi Eze (mixed story of success for his England teammates going up against UK number 1 Liam Pitchford here.)
They are impressively raw – as if they have not played that much or had much coaching (look at the… dubious serves…), but yet both have strong, aggressive games, presumably picking table tennis up quickly due to quick reactions, general sporting talent, and competitive spirit.
Another fierce table tennis rival of Eze, and probably an even stronger player, is Trevor Chalobah. They enjoyed “intensely competitive” matches when the Chelsea defender was on loan at Crystal Palace.
He says, “If I hadn’t become a football player, I might have become a table tennis player. My uncle and father both played tennis and are skilled, and I was influenced by them.”
Elsewhere, Morocco midfielder Neil El Aynaoui, as TalkSport says, ironically channelled his famous tennis father in avoiding hitting the net as he missed a penalty for Morocco against the Netherlands, for his father Younes was Morocco’s first pro tennis player to reach two Grand Slam quarters in his career, with a career high of 14 in the world. (The wordplay, it must be said, does a great disservice to Roma midfielder Neil, as his World Cup performances have been impressive enough to attract Barcelona, Everton, Liverpool, and Manchester United as suitors.)
Younes explains: “At first, it was more the tennis courts for Neil, because we spent more time there than on the football pitches. But we lived in Barcelona, and we know the passion for Barca there. From birth until he was ten or 11, he was immersed in tennis. That’s when he caught the football bug, and from then on, it was all he cared about.”
And Manuel Neuer, in his peak and at times arguably the greatest keeper in the world, is a skilled tennis player (as well as padel and pickleball). Germany teammate Joshua Kimmich, who sounds like a solid player too from the way he talks about the game, says, “Manu seems to serve from a different floor of a building. The ball comes down so quickly, that sometimes I could barely see it. During our only game – when we were on international duty with Germany – he just kept playing backhands and then attacking the net. He’s so big it’s really tough to get the ball past him.”
Neuer’s skills between the sticks evident on court too with this casual one-handed catch at pickleball.
And going back a bit, but with a World Cup reputation that surely warrants it, Ronaldo (R9 Ronaldo, that is) is a big tennis fan and a solid player, sporting a quite classy single-handed backhand, which is always nice to see given its demise in the modern game (I have a single-handed backhand…could you tell? 😅). In fact, he has even said he prefers watching tennis to football now. Here he is training with famous coach Patrick Mouratoglou.
A few past players have even graced the tennis court in pro events. Paolo Maldini, clearly not content with being arguably the game’s greatest ever left-back, tried his hand at tennis after retirement. He and his doubles partner Stefano Landonio, who also acted as his coach, lost 6-1, 6-1, to Tomasz Bednarek and David Pel. Given tennis’ scoring system, which is harsh on the weaker player as it’s not easy to register on the scoreboard, to get games against pros is impressive. As racketlon players know, that scoreline could easily translate to getting about half a dozen or even a dozen points on the tennis set in racketlon.
He explains, “It was a unique and unrepeatable experience, I have lived it as a game and there will be no other experience like this. We could have played better on a few points, but no problem. It could have ended 6-0, 6-3, [but] we lost 6-1 6-1 and that’s fine.”
And Diego Forlan was a promising junior tennis player before committing to football – and continued in tennis in retirement. He was given a wildcard to the 2024 Uruguay Open, a Challenger event, and lost 1 and 2 to the fourth seeds, which is also respectable – and has played much on the ITF Masters professional tennis tour, with some success.
Going the other way, there are many racket sports pros and former pros who excelled at football, including Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner, Andy Murray (who says he had to stop playing football tennis as it was taking over his regular tennis practice), Michaël Llodra, Roger Federer, Yannick Noah, Rafael Nadal (who put six past Casillas in a charity match), Daryl Selby, and Pete Barker.
Anybody you would add in terms of footballers great at racket sports or vice versa?!
For racketlon players that have played football to a very high level, as well as other sports and skills, check out our article here.
