Aug 11, 2026
The debate around Umberto Ferrara always starts in the wrong place.
Jannik Sinner has a knee problem, Ferrara is once again his fitness coach, and his name is immediately dragged back into the spotlight. Yet we do not even know how Sinner injured himself, or whether the problem has anything to do with his training load.
If Ferrara is to be judged on what happened to Sinner physically, then the whole period in which he worked with him has to be considered.
Sinner’s Year of the Dragon
Ferrara joined the team in June 2022. Sinner was world No. 13 and had just come through the most physically difficult spring of his career: he withdrew from Indian Wells through illness, retired in Miami because of blisters, suffered a knee problem at Roland Garros and pulled out of Halle.
That does not mean he had always been injury-prone. In 2021 he played 68 matches and finished the year ranked No. 10. But he was still developing physically. Riccardo Piatti said so openly: “Jannik is a player who needs to be built. He is not a finished player.”
Ferrara arrived at precisely that stage. When he spoke the following year about the work he had done with Sinner, he said he had found a young player who was struggling somewhat physically and set out his objective clearly: to enable him to play more matches over the course of the season.
So that is the obvious place to start.
The official ATP figures are:
2019: 11-10 = 21 matches
2020: 19-11 = 30 matches
2021: 46-22 = 68 matches
2022: 45-16 = 61 matches
2023: 61-15 = 76 matches
2024: 70-6 = 76 matches
Of course, 2022 is a mixed year, because Ferrara only arrived in June. Nor can 2024 be attributed entirely to him: Ferrara and Naldi left the team after Cincinnati in August. But the period up to the US OPEN certainly belongs to his tenure — in other words, virtually everything that matters, for better or worse.
In mid-June 2022, Sinner was world No. 13. Before returning to competition at Eastbourne, his record for the season stood at 27-7. Two years later, on 10 June 2024, he became ATP world No. 1 for the first time.
By the time Ferrara was dismissed after Cincinnati, Sinner had already recorded 48 wins, five defeats and five titles in 2024, including the Australian Open, Miami and Cincinnati.
The key season, though, is 2023. It is the only full calendar year entirely contained within Ferrara’s first spell with Sinner, and it is the breakthrough year. Anyone who watched it knows what happened.
It was Sinner’s Year of the Dragon.
He played 76 matches, winning 61 and losing 15. He won four titles, including his first Masters 1000 in Toronto, reached the Wimbledon semi-final and the ATP Finals final, and finished the year ranked No. 4 in the world. The ATP named him Most Improved Player of the Year.
Seventy-six matches.
In 2021, which can reasonably be described as a physically good season before Ferrara, he had played 68.
Eight more may not sound like much if all matches are treated as identical units. But they are not.
In 2021, Sinner lost 22 times. Each defeat ended that week’s run and was followed by rest, training or travel without the requirement to play again the next day.
In 2023, he lost only 15 times. He won four tournaments and reached the final stages far more often. In Turin he played all the way through to the final; a few days later — not included in the figures above — he was in Malaga winning the Davis Cup, where he played both singles and doubles.
In 2024, that effect became even more pronounced.
This is not to say that a match played as world No. 1 somehow “weighs” more than one played as world No. 10. The calendar itself is enough to make the point: players who consistently reach the closing rounds of tournaments play more matches within the same weeks and, at the Slams, more best-of-five tennis. That can create dangerous cumulative effects, as in the Musetti case analysed here.
Better results therefore become an additional physical stressor in their own right.
“The bald guy”, as the haters call him, did not teach Sinner his down-the-line backhand. But he did put him in a better position than Musetti: you cannot keep reaching the latter stages of tournaments unless your body allows you to keep doing so.
Sinner became world No. 1 in June 2024. When Ferrara left the team after Cincinnati, he was 48-5 for the season and had already won five tournaments, including the Australian Open. The USO2024 victory, moreover, cannot reasonably be separated from the Ferrara period.
None of this means there were no problems.
In 2022 there was the ankle sprain in Sofia, although that resulted from a twist on court. In 2023 there was an adductor problem in Halle. In 2024 came the most serious episode: the hip injury that forced him to withdraw from Madrid and miss Rome. That injury belongs entirely to Ferrara’s tenure.
Even so, the broader pattern remained unchanged. Sinner returned from the hip injury at Roland Garros, reached the semi-final and then won Halle.
Was that all thanks to Ferrara?
Of course not.
It would be impossible to separate his contribution from Sinner’s natural development, the work of Vagnozzi and Cahill, technical improvements and tournament scheduling. What those two years do challenge, however, is the idea that Sinner somehow became more physically fragile under Ferrara. The evidence points in the opposite direction.
The Strange Case of Dr Ferrara and Mr Trofodermin
Then there is Clostebol, which eventually overshadowed Ferrara himself and almost everything else about his professional work.
Since August 2024, his name has been associated above all with the Trofodermin he bought and Giacomo Naldi used. But here too, wording matters — especially in a legal context.
From a disciplinary standpoint, negligence on Umberto Ferrara’s part was never established.
That is not a minor detail.
Under the anti-doping system, responsibility for a positive test rests with the athlete under the principle of strict liability: for violations of Articles 2.1 and 2.2 of the TADP, intent, fault or negligence do not need to be proved. Once intentional conduct has been excluded, Article 10.2.2 provides for a starting sanction of two years.
That sanction may then be reduced: all the way to no period of ineligibility in cases of No Fault or Negligence under Article 10.5, or to a reduced sanction in cases of No Significant Fault or Negligence under Article 10.6. The same framework is set out in paragraph 75 of the Sinner decision.
Had Ferrara actually been negligent from an anti-doping perspective, and had that negligence been legally relevant and attributable to Sinner, it would have directly affected the possibility of finding that the player bore No Fault or Negligence.
The tribunal reached the opposite conclusion: Sinner had exercised the required degree of care and bore no fault or negligence within the meaning of Article 10.5.
Nor do the documents describe Ferrara as a fitness coach who carelessly introduced a prohibited substance into Sinner’s entourage. The tribunal established that the Trofodermin was among his personal belongings, that he knew it contained clostebol, that he was entitled to possess it and that, when he recommended it to Naldi to treat his cut, he expressly warned him not to use it near Sinner.
On that basis, the tribunal concluded that Sinner had exercised the highest degree of care required by the Code and found that he bore No Fault or Negligence.
To describe Ferrara’s negligence today as an established fact is therefore to attribute to the documents a conclusion they do not contain.
Then Came Panichi
The anti-doping case explains why Sinner parted company with Ferrara and Naldi in August 2024.
Marco Panichi then joined the team, although comparisons between the two periods can only go so far. Panichi arrived with the season almost over, inherited an athlete who was already world No. 1 and, a few months later, Sinner spent three months away from the tour as a result of the agreement with WADA.
That meant a significant period without the normal wear and tear of the ATP calendar.
What we do know is that Sinner and Panichi worked well together. In an interview with Repubblica on 31 December 2025, Panichi said:
“The three months of his suspension were one of the best periods of my professional life.”
He added that during that time they had “worked in depth”, while enjoying the process, exchanging ideas and maintaining great mutual respect.
What is striking is what happened next.
At the end of June 2025, after the excellent but unfortunate final lost in Paris to Alcaraz, Sinner parted company with Panichi. Less than a month later, he brought Ferrara back.
That choice matters. Sinner had worked with both men and chose to return to the first.
Asked why, he said Ferrara knew his body better and that their previous work had improved his mobility, stability and ability to sustain physical effort.
That is not scientific proof. It is, however, the assessment of the athlete who relies on that body every day.
Ferrara’s second spell has been less straightforward. There have been cramps, episodes of illness and now the knee problem. They will need to be assessed by distinguishing between injuries, illnesses, trauma and problems related to heat or overtraining.
One fact nevertheless remains: Sinner continues to win and to reach the closing stages of tournaments with remarkable consistency.
We do not really know how Sinner is doing in a broader physical sense. After his collapse in Paris, Wimbledon was a decidedly positive test. In his own words:
“We worked a lot, especially after Paris, trying to understand what had gone wrong. We prepared in the best possible way. Today was a huge test and I felt really, really good physically. It is a good step forward.”
There are still doubts, and I would venture to interpret them as suggesting something more systemic than a problem with physical preparation:
“If it were to happen again like it did in Paris, I hope not, but if it did happen again we know we would have to change another couple of things.”
At a time when gathering the world’s best players around a net would produce something resembling a field hospital, anyone who wants to put Ferrara on trial on the basis of Sinner’s body must also take account of the evidence in his favour.
And the strongest piece of that evidence is probably Sinner’s body itself during their first two years together.
