Rafael Nadal is battling to win an incredible 14th French Open title, but his mind might be preoccupied this week.
The 21-time Grand Slam winning champion is at home at Roland Garros and is loved by the fans in Paris.
But his beloved Real Madrid have their Champions League final with Liverpool on Saturday, May 28 and he is a devoted fan of the LaLiga giants.
Nadal famously will get up, no matter where he is in the world, to watch Real Madrid in action.
The Spaniard is not only planning to watch the match, he even has a ticket for the final, which so happens to be in Paris.
“I’m here to play Roland Garros… but I have my tickets ready,” he said last week.
Nadal might be a Real Madrid superfan, but he also has close connections to their archrivals Barcelona.
His is uncle Miguel Angel was a Barca hero who won the European Cup with the club in 1992 alongside current Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola, while he also played with Brazil legend Ronaldo.
He played more than 200 times for the Catalan club, also winning five LaLiga titles during his eight years at the Nou Camp.
As a child, the tennis star would go to training at the club and his family would not let him forget the time he donned a shirt of the rival club.
He wrote in his book, My Story: “I went to watch him play often, but I especially remember him taking me to Barcelona’s Camp Nou stadium, the largest in Europe, when I was ten, to play with half a dozen members of the first team after their official training session had ended.
“I wore a Barcelona shirt that day. A long time would pass before my family stopped teasing me about that because, despite adoring my uncle Miguel Angel, I have always been and always will be a Real Madrid fan.
“As everybody knows, Real and Barca are the two most bitter rivals in world football.
“Why am I a Real fan? Simple. Because my father is, which gives you the measure of how great his influence has been on me as a person.”
Nadal was a talented footballer as a child and he dreamed of becoming a professional.
In his book, he also revealed the lengths he goes to to keep up with Real Madrid games.
He wrote: “Football was my passion as a child, and remains so today. I can be at a tournament in Australia or Bangkok, and if there is a big Real Madrid game on TV at five in the morning, I’ll wake up to watch it – even, sometimes, if I have a match on later that day.
“And I’ll build my day’s training program, if need be, around the timing of the games. I’m a fanatic.”
He continued: “My dream then, like so many boys in Spain, was to be a professional footballer. Even though I was playing competitive tennis too, from the age of seven, and doing well, I always got more nervous before a football match.
“I guess it was because I wasn’t playing for myself alone; I felt a sense of responsibility toward my teammates.”
https://talksport.com/sport/tennis/1017459/rafael-nadal-real-madrid-liverpool-uncle-barcelona-french-open/
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