COVER STORY

Eat, play, goal

26-Sardinia Run, fun: A rugby session at Forte Village resort in Sardinia, Italy | Courtesy: Forte Village

The secret diet of football’s elite players

  • “There is a lot of evidence that certain food can help reduce biochemical markers of muscle damage caused by intense exercise.” - James Collins, head nutritionist at Arsenal

  • Players are also advised to consume shots of tart-tasting Montmorency cherry juice, shown in studies to aid muscle recovery, and to eat blueberries and pomegranate.

Arriving at the reception of the Forte Village resort in Sardinia, Italy, you would be forgiven for thinking it is another achingly glamorous holiday complex. Bentleys and Mercedes queue at the entrance, and luxury villas are set beside a flawless Mediterranean beach. Yet the plain grapefruit juice you are handed on arrival, with a map of the fitness facilities and sports laboratories, hints at another purpose.

Tucked away on the southwestern tip of the island, this is where the German and Italian national football teams come to recharge their batteries and where domestic giants of the European game, such as Inter Milan, iron out fitness issues as part of their pre-season preparations. Here any relaxing by the pool is probably preceded by an intense session in the new human-performance centre, where everything from your jaw strength to your balance is tested by experts focused on improving your sporting prowess.

One area at which Forte Village excels is nutritional expertise. “Diet is now considered a hugely important aspect of training to get right,” says Armando Vinci, the sports scientist who heads the performance enhancement centre and who worked alongside the Chelsea manager Antonio Conte for almost a decade.

Set amid lush greenery and beside an extensive thalassotherapy [using seawater] pool that he says is “a favourite of footballers”, his consultancy rooms are a magnet for top-flight sports stars. The former Chelsea player Tore André Flo and Conor O’Shea, the head coach of the Italian rugby team, are among those who breeze in and out of his gym, as he tells me about the gains that come with planning your diet. “Nutrition impacts everything, from a player’s endurance levels and speed to their recovery, to their sleep patterns,” he says. “It needs to be planned individually with precision, and while some players’ diets need tweaking, others need an overhaul.”

For the 20th-century footballer, rare was the post-match meal when steak and chips weren’t on the menu, but for today’s professional players it is more likely to be buckwheat salad or a chicken skewer. So extreme has been the dietary swing that many clubs are now hiring not just dieticians, who outline what to eat, but performance chefs who prepare meals and snacks designed to provide the ultimate winning edge.

A forthcoming “Nutrition for Football” consensus statement to be published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine will attempt to outline what players in the Premier League and Championship need to eat and drink, and when, to reach their peak. James Collins is one of the authors. A performance nutritionist at the Centre for Health and Human Performance in London, and the head nutritionist at Arsenal, Collins advised the England team at the 2014 World Cup. He believes the review is long overdue.

“The physical and nutritional demands on top footballers have changed beyond expectation in the last five years,” he says. “It is no longer a game that is predominantly endurance-based as, although top players cover an average 10.8km in a match, the latest studies show that the amount of high-intensity running and sprinting they do has increased by 30 to 80 per cent. Clubs and players are being left behind if their dietary approach doesn’t reflect that.”

It is unlikely you will run that far in a five-a-side match in your local park, but the trend for increased intensity is mirrored not just in the amateur game but also in the gym world, where workouts are far more challenging than they were five years ago. Collins, who looks as lean and fit as the footballers he advises, has a client list that, he says, includes chief executives and celebrities, largely because he is one of those rare experts with a reputation for scientific knowledge and an ability to turn professionals and amateurs into aesthetically pleasing, fat-burning machines.

So, what can we learn from the dietary approach of professional footballers? Put away the ketchup and hide the Mars bars, as the experts outline the new diet rules that might help your own fitness performance.

CUT DOWN ON TOMATOES

28-James-Collins James Collins

Tomato-based pasta sauce was reportedly one of the first things Liverpool’s first full-time head of nutrition, Mona Nemmer, took off the menu when she joined the club from Bayern Munich last year. Publicly, its sugar content was to blame, but that is only part of the story. “Tomatoes are members of the nightshade family that also includes goji berries and aubergine,” Vinci says. “They contain compounds that block the absorption of calcium by the body and I always advise players to cut down on the amount of times they consume tomato-based pasta sauces.”

Vinci says that calcium plays a key role in muscle movement, so a lack of it can be detrimental. “An athlete’s muscles contract and relax because of changing concentrations of calcium inside their muscle cells,” he explains. “If calcium levels are too low, the muscles become tighter and players are prone to cramping in their legs.” It is the same for anyone who exercises hard and at a high intensity, says Vinci. “The rule is to cut down, not cut them out altogether.”

CUT DOWN ON SPORTS DRINKS

29-Cut-down

Gone are the days when footballers were permanently attached to a drink sponsor’s bottle. “Commercial drinks are used much more strategically now,” says Collins. “They play a role on match days when they provide a carbohydrate and fluid boost, but are not used as much at certain times of the training week.” Research has shown that isotonic sports drinks (those containing tiny particles of easily digestible carbohydrate) are useful, but only in exercise lasting about 90 minutes. Experts think that, for all of us, over-consuming sports drinks is not a good idea.

“With sports drinks containing about 140 calories a bottle, it is easy to gain weight if you take them every time you do a workout,” says John Brewer, professor of applied sport science at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, and former head of human performance for the Football Association. “You need to be exercising fairly hard for at least an hour to make them worthwhile, otherwise you are effectively giving yourself an unnecessary dose of sugar.”

Sports drinks are bad news for teeth, with several studies showing that they erode tooth enamel, in the same way as fizzy drinks. In many cases water suffices, and the more minerals to replace those lost through training, the better. Vinci favours deep mineral water, derived from sources in sandstone, dolomite and gypsum rock more than 2,000ft underground, for his players. “Some studies have shown it might aid recovery after exercise,” he says.

PRACTISE CARB MANIPULATION

30-Practise

Vinci says that precise carbohydrate intake for footballers is crucial. “It is essential that carbohydrate, stored as glycogen in the body, is consumed in sufficient amounts to fuel the demands of training,” he says. “With insufficient glycogen they will fatigue very quickly, but timing matters.”

In June, a study published in the journal Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism looked at the diets of six Liverpool footballers. Dr James Morton, a researcher in the school of sport and exercise sciences at Liverpool John Moores University, tracked the players on training and match days to map their energy intake and output. Data showed that the footballers expended an average 3,566 calories a day, burning more on match days and fewer on recovery days, and that they consumed enough to cover these losses, eating an average 3,789 calories on match days and 2,956 calories when training.

Where they fell down though was in their consumption of carbs on match days. To optimise glycogen resynthesis, professional footballers require 7g of carbohydrate per kilogram of their body weight, but those tested managed to consume only 6.4g/kg. “The emphasis changes and on recovery days when they do less training the requirement for carbs drops as low as 2g per kg of their body weight,” says Collins. “There will be much more screening to make sure they are getting it right in terms of upping carbs on some days and reducing them on others.”

It is an approach that has been adopted in diluted form by trainers who advocate a higher protein:carb ratio on recovery days and more carbs on days when you need them to fuel high-intensity interval-training workouts.

EAT BLUEBERRIES, CHERRIES AND POMEGRANATE

31-Eat-blueberries

Football nutritionists are increasingly focusing on anti-inflammatory foods for the recovery plan that players follow on the day after a match. “There is a lot of evidence that certain food can help reduce biochemical markers of muscle damage caused by intense exercise,” says Collins. Among them are nuts, seeds and oily fish. But players are also advised to consume shots of tart-tasting Montmorency cherry juice, shown in studies to aid muscle recovery, and to eat blueberries and pomegranate.

A study published this month in the journal Nutrients is the latest to suggest that pomegranate juice helps reduce oxidative stress immediately and 48 hours after an intense workout. These food “are natural aids and a great addition to the diet for anyone who exercises hard”, says Collins.

HAVE GREEK YOGHURT BEFORE BED

31-Have-Greek

Vinci says that sleep is increasingly being used as an opportunity to boost training adaptations, not just as time to rest from training. “You have got seven to ten hours when the body is primed for recovery, so you might as well use it to the full,” he says. His recommendations include eating Greek yoghurt 30 minutes before hitting the sack. “The protein in yoghurt and other milk products is almost entirely casein, which digests slowly in the body and is ideal for rebuilding muscle following any intense training session, but particularly a gym workout using weights.”

In 2012, a study by Luc van Loon, a professor from Maastricht University, that was published in the Journal of Nutrition demonstrated that consuming casein after a strength workout and half an hour before going to bed stimulated muscle protein synthesis overnight much better than a placebo. Brewer says, “It is something simple like this that anyone can try to accelerate the effects of weight training and strength work.”

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