Wimbledon 2025: Carlos Alcaraz withstands early onslaught from Andrey Rublev to win in 4 sets
No. 2 men's seed Carlos Alcaraz withstood an early scare from No. 14 Andrey Rublev to continue his pursuit of a third consecutive Wimbledon title, winning in four sets on Sunday 7-6, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4.
Rublev challened Alcaraz from the start, running out to a 4-1 lead in the first set as the defending Wimbledon champion struggled to get into a rhythm. He had difficulty winning his serve while also committing several unforced errors.
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Alcaraz finally held serve to close within 4-2 and showed some emotion as he tried to fire himself up. Rublev then made an error at the net on an Alcaraz drop shot, giving him an opening to gain two points in the set. He went on to win 11 of the next 12 points.
Rublev appeared as if he might be running low on energy after a frenetic start and that allowed Alcaraz to get back into the set. He took a hard fall and lost his racket while reaching to return a serve, but wasn't injured. That almost seemed to be an answer to Rublev's early aggressiveness, doing everything he could to get back into the match and force a tiebreaker.
Carlos Alcaraz slipped and fell to the grass during the first set of his fourth-round match at Wimbledon with Andrey Rublev on July 06, 2025 in London, England. (Photo by)
(Clive Brunskill via Getty Images)
Despite his own fall in the same corner after the two switched sides, Rublev was undeterred and went ahead 3-2 in the tiebreaker. Alcaraz showed his range by going deep in the corner to return two shots, but hit his next one into the net to fall behind 6-5.
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And at that point, the crowd came to life, sensing that Rublev was about to win the first set. That feeling was affirmed when Alcaraz again went deep behind the baseline for a return, but hit it into the net to lose the tiebreaker, 7-5. Rublev had won four of his six tiebreaking sets during this Wimbledon tournament.
Yet anyone who thought Alcaraz might be shaken by losing that first set was quickly corrected. He took control with his serve in the second set and a forehand return seemed to surprise Rublev, perhaps affecting his early aggressiveness.
After Rublev held serve to tie the set at 2-2, Alcaraz mixed in different tactics with his rocket serves and forehands, slicing balls down the line and feathering drop shots at the net. That had Rublev moving all the court and curbed what was a successful aggressive approach.
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Tied at 3-3, Rublev double-faulted to allow Alcaraz to break serve. The Russian couldn't recover from there, frustrated that he couldn't win his serve as Alcaraz held to get the final two points and win the second set.
The two began the third set going back and forth, but Alcaraz arguably won the point of the match by sliding on the grass toward the corner to return a cross-court shot that darted just out of Rublev's reach for a 4-3 lead.
The crowd erupted at the amazing play from the two-time Wimbledon champion and Alcaraz held his finger to his ear, asking for more. From there, Rublev played like he knew the set was lost and ready to start fresh.
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Perhaps the difference in the match was that Rublev couldn't raise his play to another level when he had Alcaraz playing catch-up. Contrarily, Alcaraz seemed to get better as the match wore on, reaching to find an extra boost when he needed it.
Rublev kept attempting to win his serve, aiming toward the lines to get Alcaraz chasing. But Alcaraz either got to the shots that he wasn't earlier in the match or Rublev wasn't quite as precise as when he started.
The fourth set began with Alcaraz getting two aces, but Rublev didn't move further back to try and adjust to that serve. That may have been another difference as Alcaraz changed his approach and mixed up his shots as the match progressed. Those adjustments helped him recover from Rublev's early onslaught.
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If there was one adjustment Rublev appeared to make, it was with his mental and emotional approach. During breaks in play, he looked like he was trying to calm down and not lose his composure as Alcaraz took control. Under those circumstances, Rublev wasn't just battling his opponent but himself as well.

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GO DEEPER Chelsea's aggressive youth recruitment means days of signing players at peak are over Estevao looks likely to become the poster boy for that model, a brilliant talent who is already, at 18, one of Brazilian football's biggest stars. Like Vinicius Junior, Rodrygo and Endrick when they joined Real Madrid from Flamengo, Santos and Palmeiras respectively, all at the age of 18, Estevao is regarded as a player ready to take Europe by storm — even if, as his coach Perreira and his future team-mate Palmer pointed out, there will be times when patience is required. The difficulty with this model is not the extreme talents, of which Estevao appears to be one. 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I feel sorry for some of these players who are surrounded by influences — it can be their club, their agents, members of their family — who only think of the financial benefits to them and don't think about the player's career.' Advertisement As Vickery puts it, European clubs 'all want the next Vini Jr'. He feels Estevao is talented enough to put himself into that category. 'But a lot of the young players European clubs sign from Brazil are just punts,' he says. 'A lot of them won't come off. A lot of them are playing first-team football in Brazil at a very young age. Then they're sold to Europe after a handful of appearances and, in a lot of cases, they struggle.' One example, Vickery says, is Luis Guilherme, who was signed by West Ham United in June last year in a deal worth £25.5m, having scored one goal in 30 appearances (eight starts, 22 from the bench) for Palmeiras. In his first season at West Ham, the forward sampled just 150 minutes of Premier League football. In his solitary start, away to Wolverhampton Wanderers, he was substituted at half-time. He is still only 19 and was bought with long-term development in mind. But it cannot be easy to develop when, rather than playing first-team football for Palmeiras, you are kicking heels on the bench for a Premier League team, restricted to the odd fleeting cameo. In April 2021, Manchester City announced the acquisition of Kayky, then 17, who had made his first-team debut for Fluminense just six weeks earlier. He was initially a source of great excitement when he arrived in Manchester, making a couple of brief appearances from the bench, but a couple of loan spells — at Pacos de Ferreira in Portugal and Bahia in Brazil — brought only glimpses of his potential before his career was derailed further by an anterior cruciate ligament injury. He was sold earlier this year to Bahia, who are part of the City Football Group, and is yet to establish himself in their starting line-up. Another of those Vickery puts in the 'punt' category is Washington, who was snapped up by Chelsea after breaking into the first team at Santos in the spring of 2023, scoring against Bahia and Vasco in his first two starts in Brazil's Serie A. In his first season at Chelsea, he made three first-team appearances from the bench, but most of his action came for the club's under-21 team, either in the Premier League's Professional Development League or against third-tier opposition in the Vertu Trophy. Upon rejoining Santos on loan earlier this year, he told Brazilian reporters he was 'coming back at much higher level than in 2023', but so far nine of his 11 appearances have come from the subs' bench, which suggests a lack of exposure to first-team football in England has left him battling to get back to his previous level. Angelo was a 'huge hope', Vickery says, making his Santos debut at 15 and making 129 appearances by the time Chelsea signed him at 18. He impressed in a couple of pre-season matches before being loaned to Strasbourg, also owned by Chelsea's owner BlueCo, and was then sold at a profit to Saudi Arabian club Al Nassr — nice business for Chelsea and another nice earner for the player, still only 20, but somewhere along the way he lost his place in Brazil's development teams. Vickery is effusive about the potential of Santos, who made a big impression on loan at Strasbourg last season, recently won his second Brazil cap and has been part of Chelsea's Club World Cup squad, acquitting himself well in the quarter-final victory over Palmeiras on Friday. At the same time, he wonders whether the midfielder, now 21, joined the right club in January 2023 given that by the end of the following transfer window they had also committed around £280m to the signings of Enzo Fernandez, Moises Caicedo, Romeo Lavia, Lesley Ugochukwu, of whom Fernandez was the oldest at 22 (now 24). Even if the nature of Chelsea's recruitment strategy is very clear, the pathway for many of the young players arriving at Stamford Bridge is not. Advertisement Chelsea have been through something like this before. If their strategy over the past couple of years is characterised in some quarters as being something new, daring or groundbreaking, it is in part because their previous wave of investments in young Brazilian talent, under Roman Abramovich's ownership, made so little impact. There was a strong connection between Chelsea and Brazil during the Abramovich years, in part owing to the relationships between the ownership and some agents who were highly influential in the South American market. Some of the players they signed were already established in Europe, some (such as David Luiz, Ramires, Willian, Diego Costa and Thiago Silva), others (such as Alex and Oscar) were bought straight from Brazil. GO DEEPER The end of Chelsea's Brazilian experiment But there was also, like now, a concerted investment in teenage Brazilian talent. And it was hugely unsuccessful for club and players alike. Lucas Piazon, Wallace Oliveira, Nathan and Kenedy were all among the brightest prospects when they arrived at Chelsea between 2011 and 2015 from Sao Paulo, Fluminense, Atletico Paranaense and Fluminense respectively. Kenedy fared best by far, but even he only managed as many Premier League starts (six) as loan spells in his seven years on Chelsea's books. The combined Chelsea experience of that quartet amounts to 26 years, 22 loan spells and only 43 appearances (40 of which were by Kenedy). Wallace and Nathan never played a first-team game. Absurdly, by the time he left the club in 2021, Lucas Piazon was their longest-serving player but had not made a first-team appearance for almost nine years. By 2019, on his eighth loan spell, he told Portuguese newspaper A Bola he was 'tired' of the whole experience and that 'there comes a time in your career when that makes no sense anymore'. Rather than blame Chelsea, he blamed himself for believing there was a pathway for him when, in hindsight, he could see there was not. So, no, there is nothing new about accumulating vast numbers of young players from Brazil and elsewhere, securing them on long-term contracts and loaning them out again and again in the hope that one or two of them will develop into first-team players — all at the same time as continuing to make expensive additions to the first-team squad, which leads to a situation where the pathway becomes more and more congested every year. Piazon eventually moved on to Braga and, at 31, is still in Portugal with AVS. Nathan, 29, is now back in Brazil and on the fringes of the squad at Gremio. Kenedy, also 29, was recently loaned from Spain's Real Valladolid to Mexican club Pachuca, for whom he appeared in the Club World Cup group stage. There is little trace of Wallace, 31, since a brief spell at Brazilian club Sampaio Correa-RJ. Of the 90 appearances listed on his career profile on Transfermarkt, 30 were for Fluminense before he left for Chelsea at 18. Vickery is asked whether players like Piazon, Kenedy, Wallace and Nathan are cited as cautionary tales in Brazil. 'Not really,' he says. 'They hadn't really done anything here in Brazil. Talented players, but they were 'promises' rather than 'realities'. Even if it's the right player going to the right club, nothing is certain. But if it's the right player going to the wrong club at the wrong time… .' Advertisement Estevao is a different matter entirely, he says. Endrick likewise. These are extreme talents who, all things being equal, already look equipped to thrive in European football. But still, something nags. Is Chelsea the right club for Estevao? Is Real Madrid the right club for Endrick? It could be, in both cases, but both have joined clubs where there is such an array of attacking talent and such intense competition for a starting place. There was something striking that Estevao's agent Andre Cury said in March about the reason his client chose Chelsea, telling Ge Globo they were 'the only club that saw (Estevao) as a No 10', i.e. playing in a central role rather than on the wing. Cury added he 'might be wrong' about that, but that only heightens the sense of confusion about just how Chelsea plan to accommodate all these young attacking players, given that Enzo Fernandez, Palmer and new signing Joao Pedro might have designs on that No 10 role, as well as different interpretations as to how to play it. For the immediate future, Estevao looks a better bet for the right wing. But then so does Portugal international Pedro Neto, a £54m acquisition from last summer. And so does Ecuador international Kendry Paez, 18, who has just arrived from Independiente del Valle and is expected to join Strasbourg on loan. And so does Portugal Under-21 international Geovany Quenda, also 18, who will arrive from Sporting next summer. And when clubs object to the use of the word 'stockpiling', it comes back to the question of how many of the world's best teenagers any one club needs in one position — and whether such recruitment strategies, not unique to Chelsea, are healthy for the game or for the players in question. In many ways, Joao Pedro is the most fascinating counterpoint to all of this. He was not regarded in Brazil as an elite talent when he left Fluminense for Watford as an 18-year-old in January 2020. It was the type of deal that easily could have gone wrong given the managerial turnover at Vicarage Road, but he made a success of the move and then did likewise at Brighton & Hove Albion. He has joined Chelsea at 23 with more than 200 career appearances to his name — a markedly different career trajectory to some of those who have gone straight to the biggest clubs and missed an important stage of their development. Another counterpoint is Fluminense forward Jhon Arias, who has been one of the outstanding performers at this Club World Cup but, at 27, is a relatively late bloomer in his native Colombia and might find it is too late to secure a move to a big European club even if he wishes to. 'The big European clubs don't want to sign the best players in South America anymore,' Vickery says. 'They're not looking at the likes of Jhon Arias. They want the best prospects, not the best players. They want to get them in their club or in their structure now, when they're young — rather than letting Benfica, Porto, Brighton or whoever sign them and then ending up paying £60m for them in a couple of years' time.' Advertisement There is a certain business logic to that; from a cynical perspective, if a £10m investment fails to live up to expectations, the financial downside for the buying club is relatively small — and in many cases, he will be sold to a club lower down the food chain. That risk is reduced further if, for example, a club is able to sell to another club in the same ownership group, as with Manchester City selling Kayky to Bahia or Chelsea selling to Strasbourg after the Portugal Under-21 international Diego Moreira had made a solitary Carabao Cup appearance for the club. But inevitably, there can be collateral damage to some of these players' careers. Some of them might be inclined to look at what Flamengo, Palmeiras and Fluminense have done at this Club World Cup and wonder whether their careers would have been better served by staying in Brazil a little longer — even if their bank balances might not. The reality is that not every player is a Vinicius Jr. These players are exceptions rather than the rule. Chelsea have every reason to believe they have found another such exception in Estevao. But that is unlikely to deter them whenever the next hot prospect in Brazilian football emerges, which is usually any minute now.