Serbian tennis great Novak Djokovic has been working on his Greek. Earlier this week, at his family-backed Hellenic Open, Djokovic drew applause from the crowd at Athens’ iconic multi-purpose Panathenaic Stadium when he briefly spoke in the local language, saying ‘Good evening Greece. I love you’ during an on-court interview.

Sounding like a platitude that a global tennis star parrots at every city stopover on the calendar? Only it wasn’t. The 24-time Grand Slam champion was ‘breaking the ice’ with people in his new hometown, the Greek capital city of Athens.

Djokovic was till recently hailed as ‘Serbia’s greatest ambassador to the world’ by the country’s president Aleksandar Vucic, a right-wing politician. He has, however, fallen out of favour with the government and has been the target

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