Fabio Fognini just couldn’t contain himself, he did it in front of everyone: swipe in public, he still hasn’t gotten over it.
He missed it all. Wearing the blue jersey, honoring it, doing it justice. Singing the anthem together with his teammates, hearing the audience shout his name at the top of their lungs. And again, the cheering choruses, the pressure at the highlights, the match point anxiety, and you name it. We believe it well, in short, that Matteo Berrettini is so happy to finally be back on the court for the Davis Cup.
Returning to the date last year must not have been easy for him, a team man worthy of the name madly in love with the National Tennis Team and the atmosphere that characterizes events like this. That’s why it almost feels like he’s touching the sky with one finger right now. And also why he tried his hardest in Bologna to contribute to the cause and do his part for an encore.
For a champion who rejoices there is another, however, who for the second year in a row has stood by and watched. We are talking about Fabio Fognini, who in 2023, just like his friend and colleague from Rome, was unable to contribute actively to the feat that Jannik Sinner and the rest of the crew then achieved, winning the competition and bringing back to Italy the salad bowl that had been missing for so long in these latitudes.
Fognini does not forget: comment to Berrettini is lapidary
The exclusion of the tennis player from Arma di Taggia from the list of summoned players had raised, as you may recall, quite a bit of controversy. The Sanremese player had polemicized, not even too veiledly in fact, against the decision of captain Filippo Volandri, who was hurt by the way he had been thrown out the door after years of honored service in the blue jersey.
An ache that has not yet deepened, evidently, given what Fognini wrote at the bottom of a post published last Tuesday by Berrettini. The Roman posted on Instagram a few photos of his first Davis victory, accompanying it with a caption, “How much I missed this!”
“Tell me about it…,” Fognini echoed him, whose comment, among many others, did not go unnoticed at all. If only because those four words excellently encapsulate the disappointment he feels, that sadness he apparently still feels at the thought of no longer being able to play for Italtennis.