Aspire in the World Fellows Book - 2023

/35 TOPIC 1 In terms of helping players, first of all, we need information about the players before they come to us. We speak to colleagues from the different clubs to obtain specific nutritional information. Additionally, we have wonderful fitness coaches that give us lots of information about training times and types, and based on this we can understand what kind of meals we need to give the players before and after the match. Another thing we do is we talk to the medical staff, because they also give us important recovery information. As Professor Valter was saying, we must have connections. We need to be connected with the whole staff and share all information that is crucial to performance. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the national team or club, it’s like a brain and in every brain there are different areas. The area of performance, the area of the nutrition, the technical area, and there are the neurons that make up every area. Out of these neurons, you get signals, they need to get connected just like the members of the staff of the team. It is important that the players give their most and for the staff, it is crucial that everyone shares information. We have a method that is called nutritional coaching. We try and obtain all the information about the players, but you need to have the players trust and they need to trust you. How do you gain that trust? You don’t need to stress them. When I was the new nutritionist with the team, I did not know anything about the players. I just knew their weight and height, how could I understand what their needs were? One evening I prepared the snacks, and I waited for the players because I knew that in that moment I could speak to them one to one and from then they gradually started to trust me. At night time, they open up a bit. The important thing is to give them the tools. Our task is to try and educate them without them noticing, so when they are on their own, they can be independent. You need to convince them to care about their diet all the time, which is very difficult. You don’t have the food that you used to have four or five years ago. There have been so many advances, so we need to re- educate the players to the correct diet choices. This is the invisible training side of things. As nutritionists, we like it when the players are interested, they ask what can I eat? He needs to be able to make the correct choices, so we need to make them independent, as if the player were a child. We can see that the players are reading biographies of former players, where this invisible training is valued. They want to achieve this. However, we need that little push from the technical staff because all of this work is part of the team’s goals as well. AndreaCarolina Striglio ItalianFootball Federation: PerformanceNutritionist