Beh, he is the director of Corriere dello Sport, he has some experience.
He’s a journalist, he’s not an expert. He, as director, is responsible for trying to sell his newspaper and making it as attractive as possible. The Duke of Kent has also been watching tennis finals for fifty years, so is he a tennis expert too? And what is talent anyway? This, like intelligence, has a thousand nuances. There is physical talent, intellectual talent, nervous talent, dexterity or power. Talent should not be confused with genius, because it is an extrinsic thing, you can see it. Genius, on the other hand, is an intrinsic thing. The champion takes himself into the space-time of the game before the opponent even hits, he already understands and has a better forecasting ability. This is what differentiates genius, while everyone has talent, simply in different degrees. Returning to Zazzaroni, Alcaraz certainly has a more spectacular game than Sinner from the point of view of variability which also catches the eye of the less experienced.
For the Olympics, however, who is the favorite?
The Olympic tournament is very complicated to predict, because in the middle of the tennis calendar once every four years. We play again on clay in 2 on 3: we play again on clay after the grass and then finish in America playing on hard court. Sinner has to remain number 1, so I’m almost sure he won’t go to the Olympics.
Why?
If he is on the grass and thrown to maintain the number 1, going to the Olympics could also ruin his season. Let’s not forget that these guys get hurt, they are Formula One cars pushed to the limit and therefore doing an extra race outside of your expectations is inadvisable. An Olympic medal is obviously important, but it is for a player who already has a solid career behind him and who has won many Slams. They will be important and fundamental later but not now.
How Italian Musetti can be favored?
It could, since he definitely plays them. Being a 2 out of 3 tournament on clay, formulated as if it were Russian roulette, it is exactly the tournament suited to him. In which he can make the first round or medal: let’s not forget that Musetti is genius and reckless, which is why it is the perfect tournament for him.
Will you follow the European football championships?
Before football I followed the European Athletics Championships. If tennis is the king of individual sports, athletics as a sport is the king of sports. Jacobs, Tamberi and Tortu drove me crazy. We won 24 medals, it’s true that there were no Russians but we defeated the competition. There has never been a national team like this in the history of Italian athletics. As for the European football championships, I hope that they too do their best. It would be sensational if at a time when Italian sport is all the rage, the national football team were doing badly. As far as I’m concerned, it is the national team that gives the thermometer of the health of our football, not the individual clubs which are full of foreign players. The national team is the mirror and the framework of the value of our football.
Do you like Spalletti?
Very much, he is a person of extraordinary intelligence.
