Unlike most coaches, Boris Becker hasn’t been willing to speak to the media much this fortnight while World Cup-winning footballer Bastian Schweinsteiger, who was here throughout the tournament with Serbian girlfriend Ana Ivanovic, has been unapproachable as his entourage kept journalists away.

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But Becker did speak briefly with German media and told them about a conversation he had with Schweinsteiger in the players’ lounge earlier this week.

“I’m a fan of Bastian and I think he likes me too,” Becker, the coach of Serbia’s Novak Djokovic, was quoted in German website www.ran.de.

“He said to me ‘Germans are good for the Serbians’ and I could only agree with him,” he added with a wink. Fair to say Ivanovic and Djokovic would agree too. 

It is odd not having any Spaniards alive in the draw past the quarter-finals here in Paris with Rafael Nadal, David Ferrer, Garbine Muguruza, Carla Suarez Navarro and the rest of the Armada all sent packing. 

But there is one Española who will be featuring in a final here at Roland Garros: the 17-year-old Paula Badosa Gibert who won her girls’ singles semi-final and will take on Anna Kalinskaya of Russia for the French Open junior title.

Badosa Gibert has an interesting background. Born in New York City, where her parents were working as models, the Spanish-American lived in Manhattan until she was seven years old before moving to Spain with her family.

In Barcelona, she is coached by Xavi Budó, who also works with Suarez Navarro at the Pro-Ab Team Tennis Academy, and first made noise on the tennis scene when she made a surprise run to the third round in Miami last March, beating top 100 players Petra Cetkovska and Zheng Saisai before falling to Karolina Pliskova. She was ranked No419 at the time. 

A few weeks later, she qualified to the main draw in Madrid beating Ana Konjuh and Lauren Davis before retiring in the first round in front of Sara Errani. 

A few things to know about Paula: she admires Maria Sharapova and relates to her the most, she dreams of winning Wimbledon, her idol is Rafael Nadal and she prefers fast hard surfaces to clay. Hardly your typical Spanish player! Perhaps she’s a young Feliciano Lopez in the making.