Manchester City stars have had some help from Erling Haaland as they aim to improve their recovery times.
Heart and liver may not yet be on the menu at the Etihad but Erling Haaland mania at Manchester City now includes his eyewear.
As well as being one of the best players in world football, the 23-year-old Norwegian is also already one of the biggest brands. That has been seen in the spikes in ticket and shirt sales at the Etihad since he arrived last year and the clamour everywhere he goes – tickets for the team training session in South Korea last week were promoted at around £20 and 23,000 people showed up – but also in fields beyond football; he recently modelled at an exclusive Dolce and Gabbana in a sign that his popularity eclipses sport.
Even people with no interest in the game can be fascinated by Haaland, but the same applies to those that see him every day. City’s players were so interested in the glasses that their striker wears at night to help his recovery that he got some for the whole squad to enjoy and utilise and Jack Grealish is among those to have become taken with them.
The story of the glasses goes back to 2018, when a 17-year-old Haaland arrived at his new club Molde and bumped into a teenager from Philadelphia who had just started his own business. Ra Optics may not have been the first company to offer glasses that protect from harmful blue light in the atmosphere, but founder and CEO Matt Maruca does like to think that he was the first one to make them ‘cool’.
Having struggled with his health as a child, Maruca spent his years in high school learning everything he could about blue light – found in sunlight to help set the natural body clock (called a Circadian rhythm] but also found in artificial light that can disrupt it. The teenager found that blocking the harmful blue light transformed his sleep and his health, but also that his only options were “these really clunky safety goggles from Amazon – they looked like Terminator glasses” which were far from ideal for any high school student who wanted to socialise in the evening.
While coloured lenses are essential for blocking out the blue light, Maruca started up Ra Optics weeks after graduating to appeal to anyone else interested in health and wellness. It didn’t take long before the customer base grew to include stars from the NFL, NHL, MLB and NBA as well as a Norwegian soccer player that would become one of the most recognisable faces on the planet.
“I happened to meet Erling in Norway six years ago,” Maruca told the Manchester Evening News. “He was 17, it was in 2018 so five years ago in Molde.
“I was in Molde the year before he was transferred in and I happened to be there when he was settling in and we connected, we chatted, we spent some time together. Then the pandemic happened and he ascended on his rocket ship to stardom.
“I look back and think about the qualities that I observed in this young man then that I can now see manifesting in his career. One of the most shocking things was how focused he was. His head was down and he had his eyes on the target like lightning.
“It feels like a crazy coincidence but he’s been using our products and following the practices that we’ve shared as a company. We talk about not just wearing the glasses but also being out in morning sunlight to help regulate the body’s rhythm. The cool thing is that everything we were talking about years ago isn’t even niche anymore.
“There’s a lot of attention on this but the biggest thing to note – and Erling knows and the coaching staff know – is that sleep is so important for recovery for these athletes. Everyone knows if you can’t sleep for two or three days you can’t do anything, so think about how much difference bad sleep can make in your life or good sleep can as far as mental clarity.
“I saw an Instagram video of how many times [Leo] Messi scans the field per second – it’s crazy! I didn’t know how much detail and thinking, the amount of cognitive function that that requires and how sleep affects our cognition in addition to physical performance. Just by exposing ourselves to artificial light at night we throw off this basic rhythm where we secrete more melatonin and we’re not going to sleep as well.”
Haaland agrees that wearing the special glasses at night to facilitate the natural body of his rhythm to produce melatonin for better sleep has improved his football by a couple of percentage points, and has kept in touch with Maruca since that chance meeting. With more and more athletes interested in Haaland as he has risen to the top, there are more footballers interested in taking up some of the methods that Haaland employs; Ra Optics have had enquiries from top-tier professionals and clubs following social media posts from City’s No.9 about the glasses as everyone looks for new ways to improve performance.
That includes at the Etihad, where the intrigue from his teammates was enough for Haaland to get the glasses for the whole City squad to aid their sleep and recovery between games. As well as improving sleep on a daily basis, they have also come in handy for the players in minimising jet lag during the pre-season tour in Japan and South Korea with Grealish a firm fan.
“With jet lag, when we’re crossing time zones our rhythm gets thrown off because the sun is coming up in Japan at a completely different time in Manchester,” Maruca explained. “Their body’s rhythm has to adjust so their hormones aren’t producing melatonin in the middle of the day when they have to be on the pitch performing.
“That cycle thankfully isn’t fixed but in order to adjust we have to get that signal of light and if somebody is exposed to this artificial light at night instead of natural darkness they say in science it causes a phase delay or a phase shift.
“Imagine the sun sets at 7pm. If it starts getting dark around then and then you turn on the lights, if you have those lights on until 9pm there is a two-hour phase delay in the Circadian rhythm because it tricks the brain.
“When someone travels on the jet, by using the glasses they have control over when their brain recognises that it’s nighttime and when it can start making melatonin, whereas most places you get to the destination and they turn on the lights on the airplane and they have bright lights at the airport and that makes it harder to finally get to sleep when you arrive.
“With the glasses, you can fall asleep really quickly after all that travel and then wake up earlier, feel fresher, and adjust to your new timezone much faster than someone who has been affected by all this disruptive light.”
Haaland will still use goals as his main currency in football as the striker aims to improve on the whopping 52 he managed in his debut campaign in English football. As the glasses grow in popularity in the squad, Pep Guardiola may also be able to credit his striker for introducing them to quicker recovery thanks to a better night’s sleep.
