On Friday morning Polish time, Novak Djokovic was eliminated from the Australian Open. The 24-time Grand Slam winner retired after the first set of the match against Alexander Zverev. The Serb conceded the match after losing the first game 6-7.
– I did everything I could to cope with the injury as best as possible. I took medicine and bandaged my leg. However, at the end of the first set I started to feel even more pain and I couldn't continue playing, Djokovic said at a press conference.
– I think if I won the first set, I would try to play a few more games, maybe one set. But it got worse, it was a muscle tear. Two years ago I won the tournament with an injury, but now it hurt even more. I thought that a two-day break would help, but it didn't, added the Serbian tennis player.
Scandal in Melbourne before Djokovic's match
Before Djokovic's match with Zverev, there was a scandal in Melbourne, which was noticed by the Serbian media. The website kurir.rs noted that a scandalous photo appeared on the website X on the account of the “Youth of the Croatian Liberation Movement”.
It showed a tram in Melbourne with a photo of Djokovic on it. A large letter “U”, a symbol of the Ustasha movement, was painted on the Serbian tennis player's face with red spray. “The fact that the photo appeared on this profile probably means that it was the work of Croatian nationalists,” it was written on the Serbian website.
Serbs recalled that the Ustaše is a fascist movement that promoted the creation of a “great Croatia” and persecuted and murdered Serbs, Jews and Roma. At the end of World War II, a large part of the Ustasha was murdered or arrested, but some managed to escape from Yugoslavia. Some of them – like the Serbs – found refuge in Australia, where their descendants live to this day.