A young Frenchman shaped by outside influence
Arthur Fils has opened a new chapter in his fledgling career like you’d crack a window for fresh air. Days after his eye-catching run at the ATP 500 in Doha — stopped cold by Carlos Alcaraz in the final — he turned up on Marion Bartoli’s RMC Sport show, “Bartoli Time.” It was the perfect moment to deal, calmly and firmly, with the chatter floating around French tennis: his coaching team, now very European, very cosmopolitan, and not exactly wrapped in blue-white-red.
Doha lit the fuse
The Qatar event was the wake-up call. The higher the level, the more Fils looked like a different player. He hit harder. He covered court smarter. He began to assert himself. Then came the last step — too high against Alcaraz. A clean loss, but one that taught things. A podium that says he has the goods to be a regular name in top-30 conversations. He’s 19. Everything’s happening fast. And in that rush, his staffing choices raised eyebrows.
When he announced a collaboration with Goran Ivanisevic, added to the longer-standing presence of Ivan Cinkus — another Croatian coach — many raised an eyebrow. His physiotherapist is German. Cue the quick gossip: has Fils turned his back on the French model? Is he deliberately looking elsewhere for what he can’t find at home?
A foreign staff, not a manifesto
On “Bartoli Time” Fils shut it down. No drama. No patriotic soap opera. Just a simple, almost obvious line: nationality was never the filter.
“It was a choice. We’ve got great people in France. I’m a product of the French Tennis Federation, I grew up with them and they did a great job. It just happened to be Goran and Ivan, but I was mainly looking for a different experience and expertise, and it turned out both are Croatian, and my physio is German. I’m not thinking ‘okay, I must find a foreigner’ — that’s incidental.”
The point is blunt. To kill any inside fuss, he reminded everyone of what’s obvious: he was trained in France, by French coaches, inside the French system. Nothing in his path suggests he’s rejecting that. What he wants now is to feed on whatever helps him grow. Passport, language, flag — none of it matters.
Carving his own path
That stance — clear, unflinching — tells you something vital about Fils: he wants to build his career around need, not nationalism. And maybe that’s the most impressive maturity on display. He knows he still lacks a bit of weight: experience at the very top, the small tweaks that turn promise into consistency. So he goes and looks for them where they exist.
Ivanisevic brings fire, service know-how and the mental playbook of the elite. Cinkus offers continuity, discipline and the daily grind’s science. His German physio brings a different angle on recovery and body management. This isn’t a political manifesto. It’s a puzzle put together by a player who wants to get better.
The future won’t wait
Fils is moving fast. Very fast. If he keeps assembling his team with that clear-headed logic, nationality won’t slow his progress — his game will gain precision, heft and maturity. France asks for champions? She might already have one. He doesn’t need borders to improve. He needs belief. And wins.
Doha was just a preview. The next chapter is already being written. With ambition. With method. And, above all, with freedom.
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