“I live with a foot pain” – Corriere.it

Rafa Nadal outside Inter Milan. The Spaniard, the ten-time title holder in Foro Italico (plus the defending champion), lost in three sets (1-6 7-5 6-2) in the second round to Canadian Denis Shapovalov after two hours and 37 minutes. .

Nadal, who came out with a standing ovation that the senior central reserves, did not even pass through the locker rooms and presented himself at the press conference in record time: something was clearly wrong. “I felt a pain in my foot again, from the middle of the second set onwards – in his words -. I am not injured, I am a player who lives injured, and there is nothing new.” The same left foot that forced him to close last season already in August and which doesn’t seem to give him peace. Nadal by the way He had recently returned from a stress fracture to his rib in Indian Wells.

“Unfortunately it is difficult for me to accept this situation – again Rafa -. It can be frustrating that some days I can’t train properly. I don’t want to take anything from Shapovalov (Who will face Rudd in the quarters, editor): I’d like to talk about tennis, but I’m very honest. Paris? The first thing I should do is not feel any pain in training. The bad thing is that it is not possible for me to play today, but maybe things will improve in a couple of days. On good days and bad days, you have to try to keep going, even if sometimes it’s not easy for me.”

The crowd never stopped cheering for Nadal But, above all from the many frontal errors and the inability to resist the long gatherings, it was understood that behind this defeat there was more. Nadal hasn’t reached the quarter-finals in Rome since at least 2008: a geological era in the past.