Djokovic’s elimination, Messi’s farewell to the national team and a time of coming of age

Great champions have an advantage: greater freedom to choose when to call it a day, as they are sure to find a sponsor or a contract to keep them going, even beyond the natural limits of their sporting careers. However, this advantage often masks a disadvantage: there is always someone – and there are hundreds of thousands of them – who will suggest that your time is up and that it is time to call it a day, to retire, to put an end to the ridiculousness of someone who cannot bring themselves to step away.

Novak Djokovic has long been one of the strongest, if not the strongest, tennis players around, having held the number one spot in the ATP rankings for 428 weeks. He is now feeling the effects of his 39 years, despite still being the fifth-ranked player in the world (although he is set to drop out of the top ten for the first time since 2018). At the US Open, he lost in the first round in five sets to the Argentine Mariano Navone, ranked 43rd in the world (but only after beating the Serb), whilst suffering from exhaustion and vomiting.

A defeat that was enough to spell the end for the champion, forcing him to leave the field and retire from sport.

It is clear that the passing years have slowed Novak Djokovic down and weighed him down. At 39, his physique is showing the effects of time. However, he remains confident in his talent and still believes he can win another Grand Slam: after all, he did manage to reach the final of the Australian Open this year.

While Djokovic was knocked out of the US Open, another 39-year-old announced his retirement from the national team: Lionel Messi. The Argentine, too, had been advised to retire and to start thinking about life after football. He, too, ignored the so-called experts and carried on. In July, he played in the World Cup final against Spain. He lost it – he didn’t play well in that match – but he still managed to score eight goals in the tournament, becoming the competition’s second-highest goalscorer.

The same applies to him as to Novak Djokovic: the years have slowed him down and weighed him down; his physique, too, is showing the effects of the passing of time. The fact that he is a champion in a team sport and that a sort of sporting reverence has grown up around him – highly rhetorical, certainly, but nonetheless the result of an extraordinary talent – has granted him a few more mitigating factors.

What is certain is that anyone who grew up admiring Djokovic’s forehands and backhands and Messi’s dribbles and goals is on edge. They find themselves at a point where they must begin to accept the arrival of maturity. The farewell of a champion whom we have supported, and at times loved, is particularly difficult for those who watch him struggle, for those who know that an era is drawing to a close. Pushing him towards retirement is a way of trying not to face up to the passing of time, of continuing to believe we are still young. Avoiding the sight of the champion’s struggles, struggles that once brought us sporting joy, sustains the final illusion that the years have not taken their toll on us either.

One question remains: are we asking Djokovic to leave to spare him embarrassment, or to delude ourselves?