Arsenal boss Unai Emery has spoken of his admiration for Spanish tennis champ Rafa Nadal.

Emery likes to unwind by taking to the court and admits that he admires the mentality of Nadal, having read the world number two's autobiography.

"I read his book and I know some things about his history and he is work, work, work," Emery told Arsenal Player. "When he is also struggling sometimes in one match, playing for five hours in one game, tennis players have a lot of difficult moments.

"In the difficult moments you have to be strong in your mind to change the negative situation into a positive. Football is the same, only it's in 90 minutes and you need your teammates because it is 11 players that are playing and you need one strong mentality, but each single player being together too.

"I saw him live in one match and I also like to play tennis too. When I am playing tennis, I am thinking in each moment during the match that I need to be very strong in my mind to battle my opposition player. If he's better than me, with different strategies to play and fight against him too.

"Tennis is different from football because tennis is an individual game and an individual sport. Football is one team with 11 players and we need to do the combination and we need also where one player is not playing well another is playing well, the relation between them is very important."