There are years that unfold without noise, almost anonymous, even boring. And there are years that instead seem to want to leave a mark everywhere, in every discipline, at every latitude. Not only in the good but also in the bad: great joys and great sorrows.

2025 forcefully belonged to this second category: a generous, at times exuberant year, full of gigantic stories, sudden falls, unexpected returns and consecrations that were just waiting for the right moment to explode. One of those years in which sport, from whatever angle you looked at it, seemed to want to say something specific, as if it were taking a breath before entering the decade of great planetary events: this year’s Winter Olympics, still with many unknowns and delays, the 2026 World Cup still to be conquered, all on a new cycle of global and digital football between now irreversible technological revolutions and a perhaps unsustainable calendar.

Especially Jannik and Carlos

But 2025, first of all, was the year of two boys: one Italian – red hair, shy smile, a talent that is now the heritage of the world – and the other Spanish – wilder, more instinctive, more unpredictable. Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz didn’t simply play tennis: they taught something to tennis and perhaps to the world. They reminded us what it means to have a true rivalry, on equal terms, without discounts. They taught us that you can be bitter rivals without ever forgetting respect and a fundamental meaning of sport: competition pushes us beyond our limits, improves us and every champion needs a counterpart at his level.

Sinner and Alcaraz filled a void that Djokovic, Nadal and Federer had left in suspense. They have built a modern, fresh, global narrative. Their story takes us back to legendary sporting duels: Lauda and Hunt, Rossi and Biaggi, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, Borg and McEnroe, Messi and Ronaldo. And that afternoon (which became evening) at Roland Garros will remain forever as a contribution to the creation of a myth: five and a half hours, an emotional push and pull that took your breath away and words, between canceled match points and shots that seemed beyond all logic and dynamics. Alcaraz won that edition – and it was the longest final ever in Paris – but Sinner turned the defeat into fuel to close the year as an absolute protagonist, taking the Australian Open, Wimbledon, the number one in the world, and then confirming himself as absolutely extraordinary at the Finals in Turin. 2025 was their year. And perhaps, more than anything, it will be remembered for this: the official birth of the sporting rivalry that could mark a decade.

The Italy that wins (a lot) and returns to impose itself

And while tennis rewrote its alphabet, Italy went back to doing what it knows how to do in the best cycles: winning, surprising, opening eras.

Antonio Conte’s Napoli brought the scudetto back under Vesuvius with a ferocious season, full of character and turning points in the last ten metres. All by spending the right amount and leaving behind those who had invested more and worse.

A championship that saw Inter, Juve and Milan chase but give up over the long haul of the season, while Napoli remained there, clinging to an idea of ​​football that may not be the most modern or even the most spectacular, but which when it works becomes a granite certainty. It was a sweaty, emotional, pulsating championship, the kind you remember even years later.

The Italian season, however, was marked by another double triumph: that of volleyball, men’s and women’s. An absolute dominion for clarity, for depth of movement, for the ability to obtain results in the competitions that really count. The two national teams brought home important results and reminded us how the Italian school – from the clubs to the representative teams – remains an excellence recognized even by its rivals. It is unlikely that anyone can repeat such absolute domination over the years: World Cup, men’s and women’s, women’s World League, women’s club World Cup – Scandicci in an all-Italian final against Conegliano – and men’s, Perugia, five wins out of five. The only concession was the men’s Nations League final lost to Brazil 3-0 in the final, which was amply repaid by the second Italian World Cup won by De Giorgi’s boys. With a cycle, that of Julio Velasco, which we wish would never end. An example for everyone.

And then there was Federica Brignone, eternal, brilliant, full of future despite the dramatic injury that took away the joy of the season’s successes, a world gold and silver as well as her second overall crystal cup. Federica who is now slowly re-emerging from a path of suffering and pain. All the best for the Olympics: even just for the pride of being there.

And again Mattia Furlani, world gold in the long jump at 20 years old, with the feeling of being in front of a talent destined to change the face of Italian athletics. Nadia Battocletti, who has become a European reference in middle distance running. The Davis Cup, won again, as if it had suddenly become an Italian one even when the top players aren’t taking the field. Without forgetting Paralympic swimming with Simone Barlaam, four world championship golds as if the limit were a concept to be reinvented every time.

2025 was a year in which Italy won a lot, in many places and in many different sports. And this alone would be enough to cover her with memories.

2025 beyond the border: a year of giants and changes of throne

But to say that 2025 was only the blue year would be an understatement. It was also a planetary year, of stories that crossed oceans, that filled arenas and stadiums, that marked new world leadership.

Lando Norris became Formula 1 world champion, ending years of Verstappen dominance. McLaren is back as relevant as in its golden age, in a world championship marked by overtaking, twists and turns and a wonderful and uncertain ending that made the pits, stands and sofas tremble. Newspaper pages celebrated Norris as the new “humble and ferocious” face of F1. In Italy, however, the world championship had the very bitter taste of a missed opportunity: Ferrari made a lot of mistakes, too much, becoming one of the authentic flops of 2025. A bad year, certainly not the first, at the end of a season where finding something to save is practically impossible.

In football, PSG finally snatched the Champions League, ending the most obsessive narrative of modern European football. And while the French lifted the trophy, which cost – apparently 1400 million euros – the Italian clubs watched from afar, transfixed by searing eliminations that left more questions than answers: Inter out too soon, Juve never truly competitive, Milan and Roma in search of identity.

Women’s football experienced one of its best moments with England’s victory at the European Championship, in a tournament followed everywhere in the world, marking once and for all the passage of the movement into the mainstream dimension. But Andrea Soncin’s Italy, which reached the semi-final for the first time, losing narrowly, with a goal conceded after time expired, and then in extra time, against the England team that would lift the trophy, deserves consideration and respect.

In NBA basketball, the rise of the Oklahoma City project continued, symbol of the new American generation: athletic, young, modern, fun built on talent rather than old-fashioned stars. One of the few teams capable of marking a real break with the past.

In athletics, Duplantis continued to leap beyond logic, rewriting the world record with the naturalness of someone who performs an everyday gesture. In golf, Rory McIlroy finally completed the career Grand Slam by winning the Masters, to complete a story that seemed destined to never be fulfilled. And in many emerging sports – from road racing to cycling in new Asian and African regions – 2025 marked the definitive expansion into markets that were not considered central until a few years ago.

The difficult times: the cracks in 2025

Alongside the businesses, 2025 brought with it many bitter pages. Italy’s football team has once again complicated its path to the World Cup, forced into the play-offs like a recurring nightmare. A project that forgot Mancini too quickly without ever finding a real solution to a deficiency that is now evident and that those in charge are no longer able to cover. In Italy, football needs to be re-founded from the base and in a profound way. And if not even the defeats and the twelve years of absence from the World Cup can prove it, it means that the support for the clubs is making us all blind. And dull. Ferrari, as mentioned, disappointed. Some historic European clubs have experienced profound crises: technical, economic or identity-related. Serie A is dominated by foreign owners: at the moment there are 11 investors, almost all majority and non-Italian, eleven out of twenty. The global issue of television rights must be linked to this: more and more platforms, more and more fragmentation, more and more expenses and more and more confusion for fans, with increasing difficulties for sports that once lived free-to-air. With RAI having definitively set aside its public service role. A knot that 2026 will inherit and will necessarily have to untie.

2025 was also a year marked by painful farewells, including that of Nicola Pietrangeli and Nino Benvenuti, two pillars of Italian sport.

So, what year was it really, then? It was a full, very dense year. A year in which Italy won as rarely happens. A year in which tennis found its saga again. A year in which Formula 1 changed masters, European football found a new king, and the Volleyball World Cup consecrated Italy. A year where new talent exploded and some old giants said goodbye. 2025 was, more than anything, a narrative year. Of those who are remembered not because there were memorable events, but because everything – successes, falls, victories, surprises, rivalries, losses – seemed to mean something. As if sport, for twelve months, had decided to tell its story in its purest form: unpredictable, emotional, unrepeatable.

To remind us that sport is not just competition: it is the greatest story we have. We have the task of writing it down and remembering it: also so as not to repeat the usual mistakes.