Emma Raducanu’s former coach Dmitry Tursunov says he left because of ‘red flags’
Updated
The final year of Emma Raducanu’s stint at the University of Melbourne included a lot of wins and it was not uncommon for Raducanu to post up to 40 minutes in front of goal in front of hundreds of spectators.
But she quit the university’s FFA at the end of 2014 after her mother was diagnosed with cancer.
Raducanu later claimed she had been bullied but her former coach now says she was actually facing a crisis.
She was told by Tursunov that she was a poor player and had to focus on her studies, including completing her medical degree.
“I’d like to say she was an emotional player when it came to the performance issues,” says Tursunov, who led the team to a premiership in 2018.
“But she wasn’t exactly a very emotional player at all during the season with the game, that’s all I can say about that.
“She was a very competitive player, and I’ve never seen her that competitive, that desperate, that desperate to win. But the things that happened to her didn’t help and that’s when I could see red flags that she wasn’t a very good player.”
Tursunov says Raducanu, who is now a doctor, should have handled “certain situations better”.
“When she arrived to be the captain, the head of the U18s, that team suffered a lot with injuries and illnesses. That’s how it starts.”
Barely a year after her exit, Raducanu joined a team in a small college in Western Australia, where she became the first women’s soccer player to be taken into a men’s team when her college merged with a nearby university.
Emma Raducanu, pictured with her coach, Dmitry Tursunov, says she was in a crisis when the team in Western Australia merged with a university. ( Supplied )
Raducanu has said she will continue to play soccer in the men’s league.
It’s been a rollercoaster of a year for Tursunov.
He went from coaching at Melbourne United to becoming the new head of Vastaspor, the Turkey super club of around 3,000 fans, where he is