Ex-tennis star Bautista Agut scores twice on football debut
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- Roberto Bautista Agut, 38, signed for Spanish seventh-tier side CD Els Ibarsos and scored twice in a 4-2 pre-season win on his football debut, just over a month after retiring from tennis
- Bautista Agut previously played for Villarreal's youth teams until age 14 before switching to tennis, and said on Instagram that his new stage is 'making me very happy'
- CD Els Ibarsos, based about 60 miles north of Valencia, presented the player to fans and said they look forward to watching him play for a 'whole season'
- Bautista Agut's tennis career featured 12 singles titles and a 2019 Davis Cup triumph with Spain, with a career-high world ranking of ninth reached later that year after a Wimbledon semi-final run
- The pre-season match marked Bautista Agut's return to competitive football roughly 24 years after he left Villarreal's youth setup at 14 to pursue tennis
Why it matters: For a town the size of Els Ibarsos — a seventh-tier club roughly 60 miles north of Valencia — landing a former top-10 tennis player and 2019 Davis Cup winner gives the club a marketable story for a full season, while Bautista Agut himself gets a second sporting chapter weeks after ending a career that peaked at world No. 9.
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