{"id":372810,"date":"2025-11-12T01:26:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T01:26:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/372810\/"},"modified":"2025-11-12T01:26:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T01:26:13","slug":"novak-djokovics-piers-morgan-interview-sinner-alcaraz-the-tennis-goat-debate-and-his-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/372810\/","title":{"rendered":"Novak Djokovic\u2019s Piers Morgan interview: Sinner, Alcaraz, the tennis GOAT debate and his career"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following Cristiano Ronaldo\u2019s interview with Piers Morgan<\/a>, the broadcaster sat down with 24-time Grand Slam champion Novak Djokovic, the greatest men\u2019s tennis player of the modern era.<\/p>\n

Djokovic, who at 38 is entering the latter stages of his career, discussed Jannik Sinner\u2019s doping case<\/a>, his own deportation from Australia after the country\u2019s immigration minister revoked his visa in 2022, his status as the GOAT in tennis, and how he wants to be remembered.<\/p>\n

The interview<\/a> begins with Morgan apologising for his criticism of Djokovic at the time of his deportation from Australia, nearly four years ago. Djokovic accepted the apology and said he was never anti-vaccine but instead pro-freedom of choice.<\/p>\n

On the tennis GOAT debate<\/p>\n

Djokovic declined to label himself as the best of all time, veering away from comparing his numbers with Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer to focus on the difficulty of comparing tennis eras. \u201cI\u2019m not going to say whether I\u2019m the greatest or not because it\u2019s not my position to say that,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I would say that would be very disrespectful to those who have paved the way for Nadal, Federer and all the others.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s so hard to compare eras; our sport has gone through quite a transformation in the last 50 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morgan showed off some gear knowledge by mentioning rackets, before Djokovic added in balls, surfaces, entourages and changes in the intensity of preparation and the quality of the data and information players have available to them.<\/p>\n

Djokovic named John McEnroe and Bj\u00f6rn Borg among the legendary players to have paved the way for his generation. He also said he considers his former coach Boris Becker, a six-time Grand Slam champion, to be \u201cpart of my family.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the twilight of his career and Sinner and Alcaraz<\/p>\n

Djokovic said at the U.S. Open that he no longer sees Grand Slams as the most realistic places to beat Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, who have opened a gulf at the top of men\u2019s tennis the past two years. He has also said he wants to play at the Los Angeles Olympic Games in 2028, describing himself as entering into a \u201ctransition\u201d in which he seeks to maintain motivation while dealing with the \u201crealities\u201d of his physical condition.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing the dominant player for most of my career, for over 20 years, and now being dominated by Alcaraz and Sinner \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Morgan cut in to ask just how humiliating that is. \u201cIt\u2019s a natural progress and evolution in sport,\u201d Djokovic said. \u201cThey\u2019re great for our sport.\u201d<\/p>\n

Djokovic went on to say he didn\u2019t want to watch the epic French Open final between Alcaraz and Sinner because when a tournament is over for him, he wants to switch off entirely. He deliberately took his family out for the day to avoid it, but they ended up watching anyway because it went longer than anyone expected and his wife and kids insisted. So he was torn between not wanting to look at the screen and, at first, becoming tactically engrossed and then full of admiration \u2014a feeling he has felt in just \u201cfour or five matches\u201d in his life.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy best level now, their best level now \u2014 they\u2019re better. That\u2019s the reality,\u201d Djokovic added.<\/p>\n

Morgan then got Djokovic to talk about his physical condition, which he says is about getting to know his body and what it can achieve as he ages. Djokovic said that, to some extent, he still thinks he\u2019s a \u201csuperman who can never injure himself or be weak,\u201d though he acknowledged he\u2019d \u201chad a slap from reality the last couple of years.\u201d That said, Djokovic still believes he will beat whoever is on the other side of the net.<\/p>\n

\"Novak<\/p>\n

\n Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz have tested Novak Djokovic\u2019s limits in his late career. (Adam Pretty \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n

On not being a tennis player<\/p>\n

After a segment discussing the differences in pressure in personal and private lives, during which Djokovic recalled his childhood in Belgrade during the Kosovo War, he said he did not enter the tennis court as a tennis player but instead as a person \u201cwho has to deal with all the other things that are happening in my private life that people don\u2019t know about or shouldn\u2019t know about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morgan asked him what kind of circumstances had most affected his performance, good times or bad. Djokovic said adversity fuels him and has fueled him, especially in the early part of his career, but went on to say he can get \u201cfed up\u201d with drawing things from a negative emotion. Positivity is a more \u201cconstructive energy,\u201d he said, then added that his realization that he wants to prioritize his family in his late career helped him shift his mindset in that direction.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the greatest motivations is to have both of my children experience their daddy winning Grand Slams and being there. And I have been so blessed and fortunate to experience that multiple times now,\u201d he said. He added that it would be a dream to play his son, Stefan, 11, in a competitive match, joking that he wouldn\u2019t go easy on him and would \u201ckick his beep.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for the peak of his career, Djokovic referred to the period from 2015 until the middle of 2016, when he won five out of the available six Grand Slams, reaching the final of the other. In the period from the start of 2015 until the end of the 2016 French Open, his record was 126-9. He doesn\u2019t think any player in tennis history could have stemmed his period of domination and described feeling \u201cempty\u201d when his results took a major downturn in the second half of 2016.<\/p>\n

On Sinner\u2019s doping case<\/p>\n

After Morgan set up a neat joke about Sinner and Alcaraz being so good they are robots, he asked Djokovic about whether top players get treated at a different level.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat cloud will follow him as the cloud of Covid will follow me,\u201d Djokovic said, referring to his deportation from Australia in 2022. He then launched into the issue that has dogged tennis since Sinner\u2019s case: a sport that is demonstrably two-tiered in financing, court preference, match-time preference, practice schedules, sponsorship deals and so much more being assumed to be the same at the anti-doping level, even when cases are conducted according to the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) protocols.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just something that was so major. \u2026 Over time, it will fade, but I don\u2019t think it will ever disappear,\u201d Djokovic said. Morgan then asked if Djokovic believed Sinner, and he said he always came across very genuine when they were training at Riccardo Piatti\u2019s academy in Italy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen this happened, I was shocked, honestly,\u201d he said. \u201cI do think that he didn\u2019t do it on purpose, but the way the whole case was handled is so many red flags.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morgan ventured that if Sinner had been world No. 500, he would have been banned, which is entirely possible given the huge legal disparity in resources between a player of Sinner\u2019s renown and someone lower in the world rankings, a disparity Djokovic encapsulated as \u201cpreferable treatment.\u201d He also talked about a \u201clack of consistency\u201d and the \u201cconvenience\u201d of the three-month ban, meaning Sinner wouldn\u2019t miss any of the Grand Slams.<\/p>\n

Morgan tried to get a joke out of Djokovic relating to Sinner\u2019s name, but he didn\u2019t play along.<\/p>\n

On his retirement<\/p>\n

Morgan asked Djokovic how he would like to be remembered. He cited Nikola Pili\u0107, the Croatian player and coach whom he has long called his \u201ctennis father\u201d and who died in September. Djokovic said Pili\u0107\u2019s funeral was the first one he had ever attended \u201cbecause of his avoidance of the emotions and the sadness\u201d that led him to miss the funeral of his great-grandfather.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe human connections that he (Pili\u0107) has left behind and established throughout his life and his career,\u201d Djokovic said. \u201cHow he touched people\u2019s hearts who were not just there at the funeral, but at the tennis club, post-funeral. \u2026 The way people talked about him, it was not about tennis and what he has achieved as a player, as a coach, who he has coached. It was about who he was as a person, how he conducted himself with people, how he changed the lives of young people or anybody who he has (been) coming close to. That\u2019s how I want to be remembered.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Following Cristiano Ronaldo\u2019s interview with Piers Morgan, the broadcaster sat down with 24-time Grand Slam champion Novak Djokovic,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":372811,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[392,3777,62,222,1464,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-372810","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-culture","9":"tag-olympics","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-sports-business","12":"tag-tennis","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115534128319656144","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=372810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/372811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}