It all started with a friendship. Love, the three children, the future as manager of the former n. 9 of the world: “We are the mirror of each other”
Now that Flavia She returned to TV in her role as a commentator for Sky Sport e Fabio He remained in London with the tribe (Federico, 8 years old, Farah, 5, and Flaminia, 3), the habit of the Effe is a thread of Arianna to follow to retrace the history of the Fognini familyended up in a worldly of Wimbledon in the afternoon when the landlord kept nailed on the grass for four and a half hours a certain Carlos Alcaraz, the Harry Potter of contemporary tennis, making his eyes shine with his wife, children and the gods of tennis.
Spoiler. The memorabilia that Fabio asked the Spanish champion at the end of the match came to his destination: a sweaty shirt for the eldest son Federico, Ultrà of Alcaraz, who will never be able to put in the washing machine. The relics are preserved intact, what the heck. And the fact that the epic on the Wimbledon plant may have been the last game of the veteran, 38 years of which twenty -one of career, has released a special emotion in the air, which Flavia Pennetta in Fognini, queen of the USA Open 2015, summarizes as follows: “The decision to quit is very personal, I say it from experience: after so many years you find yourself only in the role of tennis player, It is not easy to get out of the scene». Yet she succeeded very well. Roberta Vinci defeated in the final in New York, raised the cup and greeted everyone. He wanted to become a mother, she was in love with Fabio, who with paternity would find the quadrature of her very personal circle. The birds disqualified in America for sexist insults to the chair judge, which Flavia on Corriere della Sera Defense between tears of authentic despair (“on the field he closes his vein, but he is not like that …”), he doesn’t live in here anymore. «I wish him to close with the wonderful sensations on the match with Alcaraz. It was very good, I’m proud: For me it is as if he had won. If he went on he would risk spoving that moment ». Ask for advice? “In his own way. I am his mirror: not the chin. But the choice is his ».
For Italian sport, Flavia Pennetta43 years old, proudly Apulian, daughter of Oronzo president of the Tennis Club of Brindisi and Concetta (beautiful like her), Elvy’s grandson first player and then teacher, he represented exactly everything that was for Fabio Fognini: the object of desire, girlfriend, wife, mother. We saw her slimming drastically for a bad story ended badly – with the Spaniard Carlos Moya, of which he discovered the betrayal from a gossip magazine – and then take everything with interest to the age in which the others browse the album of memories. It is beautiful, today that the infatuation for the former blue bad boy has become the most sunny family of the professional circuit, remembering the stages. «It was a falling in love after years of friendship, during which we had other partners. Fabio is a good life partner, the husband I expected. It will seem strange that I say it, but he is a patient man. The patience he did not have on the pitch holds her for the family. Men are often immature, they tend to always remain in the role of children, they struggle to free themselves from the families of origin. Without escaping the rule, Fabio improved and raised a lot ».
Fabio Fognini From Arma di Taggia (Imperia), born in 1987, the fastest right arm west of the Argentine stream is not bad. It is that they draw him like this. Although on the pitch, in four abundant lusters of loss races in pursuit of the big Three (Federer, Nadal and Djokovic, the Holy Trinity of Tennis), has left more hearts – its generosity, especially with the blue shirt, is legendary – that outbursts (a couple, however, remained proverbial), the narration of a very talented player has passed to the posterity. Sometimes unmanageable. “In each of us there are two faces, for better or for worse – he explains -. When I hang the racket on the nail I will be able to say I was from myself from all points of view. Errors are part of life: I don’t let me aspire, I’m not proud of it. And when I was wrong, I’ve always paid the consequences. Never had discounts ». Discounts do not even make Flavia: «He tells me that he does not understand: it is as if I had sometimes stopped existing on the pitch and in my place another guy had suddenly arrived, totally out of control. An enemy I brought inside and that, sometimes, I have not been able to keep at bay ».
The first kiss in Barcelona, where both lived for work needs, in February 2014. The most fairytale madness in Montecarlo: when she, landed in Nice, found him, and a helicopter with the rotating blades, ready to take flight towards the fields of the country club which today is the house of Jannik Sinner. Of clues, like the Templars of a sect, had sown the four corners of the world. That abbreviation, “BN”, designed with the racket by Fabio on the red land of Viña del Mar, third ATP title attached by Fognini to its possessions (nine in total with the Zenit of the triumph at the Master 1000 of Montecarlo in 2019), had become an integral part of the Autograph of Flavia, while a new pendant appeared on the neck: “Nmm”, I never give up the motto of the former N ° 9 of the world. What do you like Flavia? “The complicity, the understanding with a look». She: «We have always said things in the face. It was Fabio who gave me the ugliest news of my life: the death of our friend Federico Luzzi, for leukemia, in 2008 ».
The beauty of the Fognini’s, known in the environment, exploded on Monday on the Wimbledon plant, the place of strawberries in which Fabio became great almost out of time, leaving the impression of a man finally resolved on the lawn. “Finish here … I dreamed of closing in front of my children, in the locker room I cried: I can say I am happy.” Spoiler bis: there will be another tennis (as manager).
