Rafa Nadal has revealed that he lived with constant pain for 20 years because of Müller-Weiss syndrome, a rare disease that deforms the foot, in the new Netflix documentary Rafa released Friday, May 29. The 22-time Grand Slam champion said the condition changed the way he trained, competed and even moved through the final stretch of a career built on endurance.
The disclosure is landing now because Nadal, who will turn 40 next Wednesday, has spent most of his career with the image of a player who seemed built to absorb punishment and keep going. In the documentary, he recalls telling Toni Nadal: “Lo siento, pero no puedo más. Estaba continuamente con dolor.”
Nadal’s condition was diagnosed in 2005, after he won his first Roland Garros title, when he was 19 years old and told he had osteochondritis of the tarsal scaphoid. He first spoke publicly about it in June 2022, after winning his 14th Roland Garros title in Paris, but the documentary goes further, showing how the problem shaped nearly every season that followed.
The disease affects the tarsal scaphoid bone in the middle part of the foot, and the article describes it as degenerative, chronic and difficult for walking and high-impact sport. Nadal used adapted shoes, orthopedic insoles, painkiller injections and hyaluronic acid injections to keep playing, and at Roland Garros 2022 he competed with his foot completely anesthetized. The compensations did not stop there: the prolonged use of anti-inflammatory drugs caused other complications, including intestinal perforations, while the strain also spread to his knees, back and hips.
That is what makes the documentary so striking. Nadal has long guarded the scale of the injury, in part because he wanted attention to stay on his victories rather than on the damage underneath them. In that sense, the film does not just explain one foot problem. It strips away the illusion around one of tennis’s most indestructible figures and shows how much of his greatness was built while he was hurting.
What remains unanswered is how much the syndrome will continue to affect him now that the story is public. The documentary makes the pain impossible to ignore, but it does not offer a clear next medical step for Nadal beyond the career he has already fought through.
