Читать книгу A League of Their Own - The Book of Sporting Trivia: 100% Official - Литагент HarperCollins USD, F. M. L. Thompson - Страница 24

When you add up the hours spent actually competing, sports stars only spend a fraction of their week in combat. How do they chill out, then, in between the occasional training session?

GLEN JOHNSON

Liverpool right-back Johnson is not like your stereotypical footballer when it comes to chilling out between training and games. Instead of spending hours glued to the screen playing video games, he studied for a maths degree. The England star spends two hours a day poring over Open University algebra and trigonometry, and often gets his team-mates to test him on coach journeys to matches. The former Portsmouth player explained, ‘I’ve always liked maths so I thought, “Why not? There’s not a job in the world that maths can’t help you with.” My teachers used to say, “You ain’t going to achieve anything.” The last thing they’d expect me to do is a maths degree. But anyone can do anything if they put their mind to it.’

JAN VERTONGHEN

Tottenham’s defensive lynchpin is a dab hand at pub quizzes and liked nothing better than to hit the boozer each week in Amsterdam for a thorough brain workout during his trophy-fuelled Ajax days. The Belgian international revealed, ‘I love to do it because I can’t really go out. It’s my version of going out. I don’t go to drink beer. My best subject is sport, but I think I also know something about the world. I haven’t found a pub in England which does a good quiz yet. At the moment, I think the questions might be too English-based for me.’

PEP GUARDIOLA

The Bayern Munich manager is not your conventional top-flight boss. Former Spanish international Guardiola is a keen poet in his time away from the goldfish bowl of managing the Bundesliga giants and often recites his poems in public. Pep plucked up the courage to recite one at a charity event alongside singer Lluís Llach. One such line from the poem ‘Life Is a Journey’ reads like this: ‘I hold a stone in my hands and every night I let it fall into the deep well of the sun and I take it out the next day, soaked in life.’ Cantona would be proud.