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Berrettini in the semifinals at Wimbledon: you can dream

He entered history lightly, with personality, with the complicit destiny of the predestined. Matteo Berrettini, after beating Félix Auger-Aliassime in four sets, he is in the semifinals at Wimbledon. 61 years later a national monument like Nicola Pietrangeli another blue enters the top four players of the most prestigious tournament in the world.

Pietrangeli braked in front of the immense Rod Laver, Matteo Berrettini can go all the way. From Wembley, where Mancini’s national team will challenge the hosts in the European final on Sunday, to Wimbledon, where Berrettini will play for access to the final on Friday with the Polish Hubert Hurkacz, who eliminated Federer: in England they speak Italian.

At 25, the Roman is ready for anything. It was the first Italian to reach the quarterfinals of a Slam tournament in three different surfaces. His technical growth has been impressive. To this he has combined an extraordinary tenacity and a management of his own mental energies that is making a difference. “I’m proud of myself. I am doing something special. And I don’t want to stop anymore ».

Grew up in the Prati Fiscali district in Rome, son of Luca, former executive of Publitalia and founder of the “Rome Tennis Academy”, judo, basketball, swimming the first sports, graduated from the Scientific High School. Fiorentina supporter, a passion that was passed on to him by his grandfather Piero. An NBA fan, LeBron James is his sports idol. has a mental coach, Stefano Massari.

He reads a lot (Bukowski, Bunker his myths), he goes to the movies as soon as he can, he loves Quentin Tarantino. He is engaged to tennis player Ajla Tomljanovic, 28 years old (three more than Matteo), winner of Roland Garros 2014, Croatian born in Zagreb but of Australian citizenship: they fell in love in Wimbledon, in the summer of 2019: they spent the whole period together of the lockdown, cementing their union, finding a way to live lightly even such a hard period.

It was his brother Jacopo to take him to the tennis courts for the first time; Berrettini is a self-made tennis player, capable of sinking and climbing, getting lost and finding himself, until he finds maturity today. Talent, discipline, the idea that everything is based on a fragile architecture, just like it happens when you play with Lego, his great passion. The number 9 of the ATP ranking (but will rise to eighth place on Monday) is coached by Vincenzo Santopadre and has already put 5 ATP titles on the board. It is the spearhead of the New Italian Renaissance, with 10 tennis players – from Sinner to Sonego, from Musetti to Fognini – in the Top 100.

In 2021 he is still undefeated on the grass. On the day when the curtain fell on the extraordinary story of Roger Federer, Berrettini took a step forward and entered the parlor of the best tennis players in the world by right. Now everything is played. And everything is possible.

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