The Team

1976-1980. The sport is tennis. We are in Italy and the trophy we are battling for is the Davis Cup. The team is made up of four players: Adriano Panatta, the rockstar, Corrado Barazzutti, Mr. Second Best, Paolo Bertolucci, the sidekick and Tonino Zugarelli, the working-class hothead. It’s a divided team, fragmented, with complicated internal relationships, sometimes conflicting, both between the players and those who lead and train them. A team, a national team, which even when it has victory in hand, is opposed and attacked in its own country. And despite all this, during those years, probably the best team in the world.