Yesterday champions on court, today on the bench in Doha. From Gaby Reca to Carolina Navarro and Marcela Ferrari: when a legend is leading the way

• The teams taking to the court from Monday in Qatar will be led by players who have made padel history. Juanjo is chasing the title with the men’s Spain team, while Argentina will rely on Gaby and Ovide. Marcela Ferrari will lead Italy’s men’s and women’s teams. Then there are Pablo Lima, Gervasio Del Bono, Juan Alday and Iciar Montes: experience will be key in selecting the right pairs and chasing the crown in world padel
  

Some are ready to give everything on court, while others will have to guide future world champions from the bench, drawing perhaps on their own experience as players. At the FIP World Cup, as in every national team competition, the coach becomes something more: the captain, the person responsible for finding the right combination and selecting the three pairs for each tie, from the group stage all the way to the final. Juan José Gutierrez Vicario, known to everyone as Juanjo, has already had to make one decision before the competition even begins on Monday 2 November. Javi Leal will replace Ale Galan, who officially withdrew today due to the injury that had also forced him to miss the Major in Kuwait.

 

Juanjo will nevertheless have the task of managing the stars of La Roja, from Arturo Coello to Juan Lebron, who, with Galan absent, becomes the second highest-ranked player in the FIP Ranking. While Juanjo, who also coaches Paula Josemaria and Bea Gonzalez during the season, will try to bring Spain back to the top of the world after Argentina’s triumph in 2024, Carolina Navarro will take charge of the women’s team. A legend of world padel and world number one for nine years, Navarro brought her extraordinary playing career to an end at the end of 2025 and immediately became a key figure in the Spanish national team, both tactically and in terms of leadership.

 

 

Argentina will also rely on two iconic figures, aiming to defend the men’s title and perhaps challenge for the women’s crown. Gaby Reca and Rodri Ovide have experienced it all, first as players and now as coaches. Reca, who also partnered Juan Lebron during the final years of his playing career, was world number one in the early 2000s alongside Seba Nerone, now a highly regarded coach himself. And when Reca shared the court with Hernan Auguste, he was coached by none other than Ovide, who throughout his coaching career has worked alongside some of the best players in the world. Completing Argentina’s coaching staff, as assistant captain of both teams, will be Juan Manuel Restivo.

 

 

The list of major names on the benches is long and varied. Italy will rely on the strength and expertise of Marcela Ferrari, the first woman to coach a leading player on the men’s circuit, Fernando Belasteguin, whom she worked with first alongside Juan Martin Diaz and then Pablo Lima. Together with Ferrari, Saverio Palmieri and Filippo Scala will be looking for the magic formula to keep the women’s national team on the podium for a fourth consecutive time and help the men’s team reach it for the first time. In 2024, the Italian men lost the bronze-medal match to Portugal in Doha, with the team coached by Gervasio Del Bono, the Brazilian who won the World Pairs Championship in 2012 alongside compatriot Julio Julianoti. And speaking of Brazil, the aforementioned Pablo Lima, after dominating the circuit with Belasteguin, playing a major role in padel’s transition into the modern era and bringing his playing career to an end in 2023, is now working on developing the talents of a nation whose ‘captain on court’ at the FIP World Cup in Doha will be Lucas Bergamini.

 

 

Great Britain has opted for the experience of Iciar Montes, world number one for 12 years and winner of nine world titles — five in pairs competitions and four with the Spanish national team — as well as five further world titles and three European titles as captain of La Roja. Meanwhile, the French women’s team will be led by Argentine Juan Alday, who has coached, among others, Marta Marrero and served as assistant coach to Fernando Belasteguin. They all share one ambition: to make history from the bench, having already done so on court.