Berrettini, has received so many offers that he hasn’t yet come to a decision: uncertain future.
Lightning strike? No, because the sky over Matteo Berrettini was far from clear even then. Of lightning, however, it was nonetheless. Powerful, unexpected, in some ways even frightening. Because no one expected that the Roman could part ways with his longtime mentor Vincenzo Santopadre.
Their breakup, in any case, already belongs to the past. Two months have passed since they said goodbye and in tennis, you know, the hands run at the speed of light. So much so that, 60 days after that announcement that left everyone stunned, the Hammer already has a new coach. Everything changes, everything transforms, but in this case there seems to be a great melancholy left. Because no one, yet, can imagine Matteo without Vincenzo and Vincenzo without Matteo. He will get used to it, for sure, but never, ever will the memories related to that golden period when Berrettini was the undisputed hero of all Italy fade away.
We’ll see if he can, now, with the help of Francisco Roig, if not return to his former glory at least come close to that level. The hammer is still there, somewhere. It just needs to be “dug up,” hidden as it is under a pile of rubble. The rubble left behind by the constant injuries, disappointments, and bitter morsels he has been forced to swallow in spite of himself.
Santopadre, this is what the post-Berrettini era will look like
He is not the only one, by the way, who has moved on. Santopadre, too, as it should be, is about to begin his new life without Berrettini. Which will be less troubled, certainly, having already decided he no longer wants to coach a champion as ambitious as Matteo, but hopefully just as exciting.
He didn’t blurt out too much, Matteo’s old coach, but still confessed to Corriere dello Sport that he was in the home stretch: “I have taken a rest to weigh every aspect of the offers received,” the coach said, “In a couple of weeks I will choose. Believe me, I haven’t decided yet.” He is speaking in the plural, which is why it stands to reason that there is a line this long at the door of that Santopadre who brought Berrettini to the slopes of Olympus.
If he will be consistent with what he told GonzoTennis some time ago, it will be a young Italian: “I would love to coach especially young people,” he had said in unsuspected times, “and have more margin to train a player. And I would love, the way I am, to coach an Italian, having a similar culture and because for me communicating Italian is preferable. “
