Flavio Cobolli, friend Edoardo Bove moves everyone with his message

All sports fans had noticed, during the Roland Garros final between Flavio Cobolli and Alexander Zverev, the presence in the corner of the Roman’s staff of Edoardo Bove, a soccer player currently at Watford with a past at Roma. It was no coincidence: Bove, in fact, is a fraternal friend of Cobolli’s and he took it upon himself to stand by him even publicly after the defeat in Paris with a message that moved the many fans of the two sports.

“There is a thread that binds my Budapest to your Paris and it runs on passion, friendship and love for sport. But also on a sense of sacrifice, pride and the knowledge that you have given everything,” Bove wrote on social media, comparing the final Cobolli lost to the one the then-Romanista lost in the Europa League, on penalties, against Sevilla in 2023. Thank you for making me feel part of your family once again. We are so proud of you.”

For Cobolli, it was the first career final in a Grand Slam tournament: a last act fought for more than four hours by the Roman tennis player, who managed to recover twice from a one-set disadvantage before surrendering to the German, who instead won one of the circuit’s four most important tournaments for the first time.

Despite the inevitable disappointment, Cobolli was nonetheless able to console himself on Monday morning: in fact, the latest world ranking update places him among the top ten for the first time, precisely at the tail end of the Top 10, surpassing Lorenzo Musetti, Andrey Rublev, Jiri Lehecka and Alexander Bublik.