Soccer Nutrition: The Pre-Match Meal.

So far we have established that Soccer Nutrition plays an important role in performance. Lets investigate further some of the rules and myths that have been floating around for decades about the pre-match meal

• There is no kind of food that, eaten in the hours before the match allows an athlete to play better. Food has no direct correlation on the way you play. However it does effect performance if you have consumed the wrong types of food. But try and remember that there is no magic food that if eaten will make you play better.
• There is a rational way to eat, which helps players to be much more efficient. There are also wrong diets which cause a considerable decrease in the efficiency levels.
• It is important to eat nutrients. Not only as a pre-match meal but for general well being. Nutrients can be completely digested in the period between the end of the meal and the beginning of the pre-match warm up.
• High starch foods such as pasta, rice, bread, potatoes…..are easy to digest. They also stimulate the development of glycogen stores in muscles, a substance from which muscles get most of the energy they use during a match.
• At the pre-match meal, players should prefer starchy nourishment’s to other kinds of food and can eat them without any restrictions.
• Pre-match meal: It is useless or inadvisable to eat high protein foods such as meat,eggs,cheeses…..
• Pre-match meal: Avoid at all costs fatty nutrients both the visible ones such as butter, margarine and different kinds of oil- also the fats combined with other substances such as fatty meat and most kind of cheeses and so on.
• Reduce the intake of simple sugars to avoid the hyperglycemia effect. So stay away from highly sugared foods and drinks, starting from common table sugar, sucrose, glucose and dextrose.
• In order to help digestion, it is possible to have a 1-course meal, that is to say one main course, particularly abundant, preceded or followed by a dish of fresh or cooked vegetables.
• When the match is going to be played in particular environmental conditions, which will cause players to perspire profusely (summer), it is advisable not to drink alcohol in the 24 hours preceding the match.
• When it is possible to foresee that players will perspire profusely during the match, it is worthwhile drinking 2 glasses of water, just before entering the playing field.