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PIQUE HITS OUT AT CRITICS OF THE WORLD CUP-STYLED DAVIS CUP

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“It will be a festival of tennis’, so claimed soccer star, Gerard Pique whose private company has the assignment of revamping the Davis Cup.

He was reacting to criticism of his innovation to the tennis tournament for nations by legendary players like Roger Federer.

According to Spanish publication, Tribuna, Gerard Pique is a busy man nowadays. With his company, Kosmos Tennis, the defender is currently working on the revamping the structure of the famous tennis tournament, the Davis Cup.

During the most recent draw of the competition, the 32-year-old reveals his renewal plans despite severe criticism from the legendary tennis players, such as Roger Federer and Lleyton Hewitt.

Pique’s most controversial decision was to stage the entire tournament in the single city of Madrid. He also changed the format of the Davis Cup – it is now similar to the FIFA World Cup’s schedule.

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 That’s why the new edition of the competition was sarcastically labelled as ‘The Pique Cup’.

The defender responds to his critics: “I hate it, because it’s not about me and I don’t want my name on the competition.

“Davis Cup history is so big. I hope we can change this opinion. After a few years, I hope they go back and say ‘We were wrong, Davis Cup is more alive than ever’.”

He continues: “I respect the opinion of Lleyton, he was a great player. I can understand that when a footballer comes in the tennis world it can seem a little bit awkward or strange, but at the end of the day I’m not going to be changing the rules of tennis.”

Pique finishes up: “We are very excited, we have been working on this for over a year now and we have a tremendous team of people involved. We’re all working together to make this a true festival. I saw Davis Cup as an opportunity and we believe we can create something very special.”

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By the way, the defender has also confirmed that Leo Messi is his business partner at Kosmos: “Leo is delighted. He knows more than anyone about this because he is involved in Kosmos. He is a partner, he is part of the Kosmos family, he likes tennis. We have a relationship of 18 years since he arrived at the club and I always try to share with him things. I’m thinking, he loves to be part of it and he wanted to be part of it.”

Kunle Solaja is the author of landmark books on sports and journalism as well as being a multiple award-winning journalist and editor of long standing. He is easily Nigeria’s foremost soccer diarist and Africa's most capped FIFA World Cup journalist, having attended all FIFA World Cup finals from Italia ’90 to Qatar 2022. He was honoured at the Qatar 2022 World Cup by FIFA and AIPS.

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