“If I don’t take the medicine, I’m a lame now” – Corriere.it

He could have retired, he didn’t because he wasn’t going to be from Rafa and why he would not have been respectful towards the thousands of people who had climbed the steps of the Central. Not all the public, in moments of suffering, had realized that behind the collapse of Nadal reassembled and beaten in the second round by Shapovalov there was the usual problem in his left foot that has tormented him for years.

The TV shots, those with the maximum zoom that reaches inside the eyes, are instead all too clear. Nadal he is not well: it is not known if he will play Roland Garros at the start in about ten days, but that is the least of it.

And so what was supposed to be a press conference like so many are seeing at the Foro Italico, has become a confession. She started, as always happens, by answering the questions in English, then when she switched to those in Spanish, the words got rougher. “If I don’t take any anti-inflammatory, I’m lame – he says -. I will continue like this as long as I endure and until my head tells me enough “. An ordeal, that of Rafa, suffering from Müller-Weiss syndrome, a dysplasia of the tarsal scaphoid, deformity of one of the bones located in the central part of the foot, essential for its mobility. He has been carrying it for over 15 years and obviously the foot problem during his unrivaled 21-title career has caused wear in other joints over time.

He had stopped in August, definitively for the 2021 season, but he was back again: the victory at the Australian Open, the one that made him break away Djokovic e Federer in the lead of the players with more majors, then another stop, this time for a stress infraction in a rib. Still almost two months off, the return to Madrid, the defeat against Alcaraz – his designated heir – and then the hidden tears of Rome. Everything, in the body of a man of almost 36 years, therefore no longer very young and who already at the peak of his physical condition should manage the inexorable passage of time.

«It’s difficult to understand my daily life, I’m not going to play the victim – still last night in the belly of Central -. Tomorrow (today, ed) I will wake up very badly because I will not take anything, I live with many anti-inflammatories because otherwise I cannot train. I’m not injured, I’m a player living with an injury. I play to be happy, but obviously pain takes away your happiness, not just from playing but from living. My problem is that for many days I live with too much pain. I like what I do, but it gives me many days of unhappiness. ”

And Nadal, by eye, in the last years of his career doesn’t seem like someone with a great desire to drag himself around the circuit. «I will not stop believing in it, fighting, generating opportunities for myself. In this I will not fail, I will do it in the best possible way. But there will come a day when my head will tell me enough ».