"Roger is GOAT, closest to perfect player we have" - Clijsters on Federer

Thursday, 22 September 2022 at 10:30

Updated at Monday, 03 February 2025 at 11:12

byErik Virostko

Roger Federer will bid farewell to tennis on Friday with a doubles match at the 2022 Laver Cup, and Kim Clijsters was one of those who paid tribute to the Swiss Maestro.

Federer's tennis career will end at the 2022 Laver Cup in London. The world tennis world is now centered around the O2 Arena, similar to how the Grand Slams always gather everyone's attention.

This time, however, it's not so much because of the competition but because of the retirement of one of the greatest tennis players of all time.

Greatness is the topic that Kim Clijsters also discussed during the Eurosport broadcast. She called Federer the "GOAT," but quickly also added that it's difficult to say who the real GOAT is.

"To me, Roger is the overall package of elegance and technique and style. He is the GOAT, but you know Rafa [Nadal] to me is also the GOAT, there doesn't have to be one GOAT, right?"

"I respect them all in so many different ways. Roger was by far to me the first one where I was like, this is incredible, this is the closest thing to the perfect tennis player I think you can get."

"I don't think in GOAT terms, I hate when I hear discussions about basketball in my house, it's always like is it Michael Jordan? Or is it LeBron James? I'm like, can you please stop this? There's no way to compare, times change, the world changes. So yeah, I stay out of the GOAT conversations."

Clijsters also remembered the first time she heard about Federer. When she was still a teenager, someone referred to Federer as the "funny guy," which she remembered for decades.

"Positive and negative, right? He had them both. He could be so pumped up but then at the same time, he could get so negative and so it was just so much fun to watch him and I remember like, 'Hey, let's go watch Switzerland play because that guy's playing... the funny guy's playing'. So I remember that as a kid, that was really funny."