Rafael Nadal insisted “everything has an end” five years ago in an eerily similar statement to the words he wrote when announcing his retirement last week.

A resurfaced interview shows that Nadal was actually at peace with his future retirement as long ago as 2019. Back then, before winning his final two Grand Slams, the Spaniard said he accepted that his career had to end one day.

Open quote marks “I’m aware that everything has an end,” Nadal told 60 Minutes, a sentiment he then repeated in his retirement statement. “And when the end arrives, I’ll be ready for it. I’m not worried about it. I’m not worried about retiring at the end of my career.

“I just want to be happy and enjoy playing as much as possible, and when I retire, fortunately, there are many things in my life that will make me happy.”

Nadal announced that he will quit after the Davis Cup next month.

“The reality is that it has been some difficult years, these last two especially,” Nadal wrote in an emotional statement to fans on social media. “I don’t think I have been able to play without limitations. It is obviously a difficult decision, one that has taken me some time to make.”

Loosely repeating the phrase he used five years before, he continued: “But in this life, everything has a beginning and an end. And I think it’s the appropriate time to put an end to a career that has been long and much more successful than I could have ever imagined.”