Professional footballers have spent the majority of their lives focused on mastering their art but, away from the beautiful game, which other sports do they take an interest in?
The official Chelsea website continues to survey the squad this summer to get a brief insight into their other sporting passions, with today’s choices ones frequently selected so far…
Andre Schurrle
‘Basketball is a sport I like a lot. Sometimes I’ve played but not really much because I have much to do, but I like it to watch and when the Germany national team was in the States, we watched two games of the finals in Florida with Miami Heat playing.
‘They had a good record and it was the Eastern Conference finals against Indiana Pacers. When you see it live it is unbelievable how fast the players are and how strong, and it’s a show. They have dancers and it is like a big party, and that is what I like.
‘When I was young I had a basket in my garden at my parents’ house.’
After football, basketball is among of the most popular team sports in Germany and the country has produced one of the stars of America’s NBA – Dirk Nowitzki (pictured below In a charity football match).
He plays for Dallas Mavericks, helping them to become national champions in 2011 and he was named the NBA’s Most Valuable Player four years earlier, the only player trained totally outside the USA to win the award.
Lucas Piazon
‘My favourite other sport is tennis, which I like to play a lot. In England I don’t play it so much but in Malaga I lived in a complex that had lots of courts and the weather was better, so I would play against my dad.
‘Sometimes I would win, sometimes he would win. Parents sometimes let their kids win but I don’t think it was like that!’
Brazil’s current top tennis player is Thomaz Bellucci (pictured below) who like Piazon, was born in Sao Paulo. He was ranked as high as no. 21 in the world but an injury-hit year has him currently at 113. When it comes to football, Bellucci is a Palmeiras fan.
