Jannik Sinner has conquered Wimbledon from number one in the world. He won two consecutive Australians, US Open, led Italy to the triumph in the Davis Cup, the second consecutive, and turned national tennis as a sock. Yet in Italy, a half love remains in Italy. It is celebrated, of course, but not idolized. Respected, but not worshiped. It is applauded, but with the tip of the fingers. Why? The answer is more cultural than sporty, more social than technical.

The anti-Italian by definition

To understand the cold (or rather: not yet hot) relationship between Italy and its best tennis player ever, you have to look outside the grass fields. We have to look within ourselves. Sinner is the antithesis of the traditional Italian hero. It is not theatrical, it does not tear the shirt, does not fight with the referee, does not make blatant gestures. He does not tell fairy tales, he does not chase myths. All is controlled, method, silence. It is vertical, while Italy is a horizontal country, where the embrace is preferred to distance, the pathos with rigor, the seductive disorder to the winning composure. In this sense, Sinner is more similar to a Scandinavian athlete than to a south or the center Italian. He does not play, he does not make the nice, he does not seek consensus. He does his job, point.

Is every talent also a character?

In a country where the “compulsory sympathy” applies, where it is claimed that every talent is also a character, its composure is seen as coldness. His education as a distance. Its sobriety as an absence of charisma. It is the price that pays to be a mountain boy, who grew up between skiing, tennis and discipline. An anthropological rarity, more than sporty. And here the second factor comes into play: football. In Italy, sport coincides almost totally with the ball. Football is belly, belonging, fans, dialect, noise. It is the bar, the curve, the post game, the exultation broken down. Tennis, on the other hand, is still perceived as a bourgeois sport, elegant, silent, even snobbish. Football is the worker hero who becomes king. Tennis is the ascetic who wins in silence. For this reason, a goal by Baggio or Totti remains in the heart more than a volée of Panatta or a winning straight of Sinner.

Football is drama, tennis geometry

Football speaks the language of Italy. Tennis, that of Central Europe. Football is drama and resurrection. Tennis is geometry and continuity. And we, people of cheering and narration, struggle to love those who do not make us dream “in our way”. To this is added a third knot: Sinner is not (still) a character. It is not controversial, it is not divisive, it is not spectacular off the pitch. He has no tattoos, cover girlfriends, prime time statements. It does not offer media meat. And in the society of permanent storytelling, this makes it less “tellable”. Less viral. Less present. After all, in Italy Cassano was loved more than Christmas, Balotelli more than Chiellini, because chaos makes noise, while constancy is silent. Sinner is Costanza. And this, in a country that loves the epic of improvisation and the stroke of genius, risks becoming almost a fault.

Who does not apologize

Finally, there is an all -Italian trait: the distrust of those who excel without apologizing. Sinner does not apologize for being the number one. Don’t lower the boss. It is not smaller to reassure those who look. This annoys. It triggers a defensive reflection, that old Italian disease for which those who really succeed, really must be punished in some way. Or at least reduced. Or criticized with something like: “But it’s cold”, “but it never laughs”, “but it’s not nice as caps”. Sinner, however, is simply himself. And perhaps this is precisely this, in the end, that Italy struggles to digest: a pure, sober, professional talent that does not need pleasure to be great. Who limits himself to winning. But time works for him. Because Italy has not yet learned to love Sinner. But soon he will have to learn to do it. Because it is the best we have. And not only in tennis.