"Never ceased to be Serena Williams' coach and destroyed Simona Halep's name" - Patrick Mouratoglou's admission on Romanian's doping ban angers fans

Patrick Mouratoglou's recent admission about his involvement in Simona Halep's doping scandal has not been received kindly by the tennis community.

Former World No. 1 Simona Halep was recently slapped with a four-year ban by the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) over multiple breaches of the anti-doping program. The Romanian tested positive for Roxadustat at the 2022 US Open and hasn't played a single competitive match since.

Patrick Mouratoglou had earlier offered a staunch defense of Halep, who was his client for a large part of 2022. However, on Friday (November 4), the Frenchman somewhat changed his tune, saying on his Instagram handle that he and his team were partially to blame for the 32-year-old's troubles.

"We have been able to establish where the contamination comes from," he said in an Instagram reel. "So we proposed her to take collagen and we brought her collagen from a company. This collagen happened to be contaminated, there was no way to know it. But I feel responsible for what happened because it's my team. So it's me basically who brought her this collagen."

In response, one fan criticized Mouratoglou for being late in taking accountability for Halep's ban. They also insinuated he may have derailed the Romanian's career due to his allegiance to Serena Williams — his ward in 2012-21 and one of Halep's biggest rivals.

"What a coward he is! Took him so long when we all knew in fact, from the beginning, that his team was responsible. If he would have come out from the beginning then all Simona’s haters would have kept their mouth shut! He never ceased to be Serena’s coach and he destroyed Simona’s name just because Simona won the Wimbledon in front of Serena," they wrote.

Another fan claimed that Simona Halep made a "big mistake" in enlisting Mouratoglou's services as a coach.

"Simona made a big mistake hiring this crook as her coach," the fan wrote.

Here are a few more reactions from social media:

---

Simona Halep's coach had previously accused the ITIA of "destroying careers of innocent players"

Simona Halep pictured with her coach Patrick Mouratoglou in 2022

In a previous statement, Simona Halep's coach Patrick Mouratoglou had claimed that the ITIA was part of a system that was unfairly damaging the careers of innocent players.

"I do not believe that the ITIA looked for the truth in Simona's case, and I do not believe that they treated her in way that is acceptable," he said. "I hope that the WTA, ATP and PTPA will do their best to change a system that is destroying careers of innocent players."

The Frenchman also maintained that Simona Halep was innocent, writing:

"I know Simona Halep's integrity and I have no doubt that she has never taken any banned substance."

More recently, Mouratoglou opined that any player can get banned from the sport if they don't keep track of the supplements that they ingest.

"It opened my eyes on the fact that any athlete can become contaminated tomorrow because apparently this happens more and more," Mouratoglou wrote on X (formerly Twitter). "We're talking about extremely low levels of something. It has zero effect, but you happen to have in your system something that shouldn't be there."

"Your career is stopped for a period of time that is extremely long. It can affect your whole career, it affects your reputation for a very unfair reason because you have done nothing. The companies that you decide to go with for supplements, you have to be sure at 100% that this cannot happen," he added.