Just five more minutes...
Every day, without fail, the sound of an alarm jolting us out of a luxuriously cosy slumber is enough to ruin a day before it even begins for many of us. Even if you deliberately set an alarm for five minutes earlier than you need to get up so you can have those extra minutes in bed it doesn't work, our brain knows that we already had those minutes and insists that we leave it until we're already late to get out of bed.
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That is not a problem for Jordi Alba.
The sleep patterns of footballers are rarely thrust into the spotlight, although we do know that Damien Duff absolutely loved a snooze, and perhaps now we know why, as the Barcelona and Spain full-back's love for a nap was revealed in The Guardian's guide to some of the weirder stories at Euro 2016.
I sleep for 12 to 13 hours at night. Then I nap for two, three or four hours more. It’s one of the keys to my strength.
Most human beings seek between 6-8 hours of sleep in a 24 hour day, it seems that Jordi Alba seeks the opposite. Now that's the life.
In other weird Spanish footballer stories, from the same Guardian article, Chelsea winger Pedro has a sea-lion named after him and they are really good mates.
The sports centre where he played as a boy is now called Pedro Rodríguez, and at the Canary Islands zoo he used to visit there’s a sea lion named Pedrito in his honour. In 2014 Pedro celebrated Pedrito’s birthday by taking him a cake covered in fish. He told the press: “Pedrito’s doing well.”
Fantastic stuff.
So next time you wake up and curse the world at having to drag yourself out of bed, think of Jordi Alba, waking up after a 12-hour kip and looking forward to a nice three-hour power nap in the middle of the day.
The Spanish really know how to rest.
