Novak Djokovic has received a fair share of criticism following the cancellation of his Adria Tour event. Most people were perplexed by the scenes from Belgrade where numerous people watched exhibition matches from the stands as if no pandemic was going in. While the whole thing was reckless there are people who defended the Serbian player and his initiative. One of them is Manchester United player Nemanja Matic. Speaking about the situation the Serbian player said:

“People need to understand that the situation in Serbia was better than here (in England). The country allowed everyone to do whatever they want, everything was open, the shopping centres and the restaurants. So they started to live normal lives because our country was closed for three months completely. You were not allowed to walk on the street, you couldn’t leave your home, so it was different (than England).”

It's a fair point but it was still reckless to hold an event in front of a large crowd as was done in Belgrade. As we seen recently similar events such as the Battle of the Brits went ahead without issues by simply adhering to basic pandemic principles.

Matic further said:

“When they opened they said, ‘you are more than free to do whatever you want. Before that tournament, there was a game with 20,000 people and nobody said anything about that. I just wanted to say that it is not his fault that he made the tournament, he just wanted to help the players play competitions. I don’t see that he (did) something wrong.”

Again a very fair point by Matic but it doesn't erase the fact that the situation was handled recklessly which resulted in several players testing positive.