Novak Djokovic needs to be careful.

When he spoke to Sue Barker on Centre Court after winning his sixth Wimbledon title and his 20th Grand Slam title in all, putting him level with Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal, he explained how those two great champions had made him the player that he is today.

His losses to them in the early days had honed him; they pushed him to work harder, smarter and better. And now he is rewriting the history books with every win he records.

But that is exactly how Matteo Berrettini feels about Djokovic. His 6-7(4), 6-4, 6-4, 6-3 loss to the Serb came as a huge disappointment to the 6ft 5ins Roman, but that, he thought, was only a good thing. In the last two Grand Slam tournaments, he has only lost to Djokovic, to the eventual champion.

“The most important thing for me is that right now I'm losing – obviously you can lose to anyone – but I'm losing against the best player in the world. In Paris I lost against him, and he won the tournament. In Queen's I won, and then I lost against him again here.

“It means that my level is growing. It means my weapons and my tennis in general are growing. That's the right path. That's the right thing that I'm doing.

“In order to win against him, I have to improve more. Like he said, he was losing against Rafa and Roger, and thanks to them he improved. That's what I'll try to do. Thanks to him, I'm going to try to get better.”

He still has a way to go but with a serve that can take the racket from anyone’s hand and a forehand to match – Djokovic calls it the Italian hammer – the foundations are secure. His backhand was a bit of a liability on Sunday but that is a problem that can be ironed out on the practice courts.

Experience, meanwhile, cannot be bought or rushed but by pushing his way into the latter stages of big events, that is coming. And keeping pace with the best player in the world for almost three and a half hours on Centre Court was a good sign for the rest of the season.

“It means that I'm there,” he said. “It means that I deserve to be here. I feel it. Today, again, Novak was the better player on court, but I'm getting closer. Every match that I'm playing against them [the best players] helps me to get closer. Obviously, they're improving. It's tougher and tougher to get there.

“I just need matches like this. I just need experiences like this. Also, this kind of anger, disappointment that I have now, it's really helpful, is going to be helpful for the next events.”

The disappointment will stay with him for a while (although he was off to Wembley to watch the Euro 2020 final and that would take his mind off it for a couple of hours), he left with renewed confidence: he was a Wimbledon finalist now. That was a huge step forward.

“For me it's been an unbelievable week, two weeks,” he said. “But I know that I can do it. I know that I can win this title. I'm not sure if I'm going to do it, but I know I can do it. So that's what I'm going to do in the next weeks, in the next months and years: try to lift the trophy.”

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