A Summer of Football: Return to the Pitch Series - Blog 2 Matchday Nutrition

In the first blog of this series, we spoke about iron intake for football players and gave examples of meals and snacks to increase your iron intake around your activity levels. In blog 2 we will be focusing on matchday nutrition for the elite footballer. First, we will look at the important nutrients and hydration and how this will help your performance in the game. Then we will provide a timeline of how to structure your meals and snacks when you have a lunchtime kick-off, as well as what should be in them.

What is important on match day?

1)      Carbohydrates

On match day, one of the most important nutrients and the one that will keep you fuelled up with energy to play is carbohydrates. During 90 minutes of intermittent exercise, 50% of muscle glycogen can be lost so ensuring stores are topped up before the game and throughout the game will be beneficial to your performance.

Overall consumption

The guidelines for match day are to consume 6 - 8 grams of carbohydrate per kilogram of body mass overall - for a 70kg athlete, this would equate to 420 – 560 grams of carbohydrates. This figure includes carbohydrates you will consume in pre-match fuelling, during the match and post-match recovery. The best form of carbohydrates to consume on match day are those that are easily digestible, and not too high in fibre as these could cause you gastrointestinal issues. The image below shows some suggestions of sources for carbohydrates on match day.

Pre-match fuelling meal

If you have a lunchtime kick-off, it is important that you eat your fuelling meal 3 - 4 hours before this so that you have fully digested and stored this carbohydrate as glycogen. The recommendation for the carbohydrate content of this meal is 1 - 3 grams of carbohydrate per kilogram of body mass – for the 70kg athlete, this would equate to 70 – 210 grams of carbohydrates. It may be beneficial to consume the upper end of this recommendation when you have a lunchtime kick-off as you may only have the chance to eat one meal, where a later afternoon kick-off would provide the opportunity for two fuelling meals.

During the warm-up and match

Research shows that there are performance benefits to consuming 30 – 60 grams of carbohydrate per hour during the match, or before each half. This will keep your blood glucose levels maintained without compromising your glycogen stores. This could be in the form of sports drinks, gels, bananas, or sweets – whichever works best for you (remember to use whichever worked well for you during training sessions to avoid gastrointestinal issues).

Post-match recovery

To help reduce your recovery time it is essential to replenish your glycogen stores through post-match nutrition. The recommendations for this are to consume approximately 1 gram of carbohydrate per kilogram of body mass per hour, for 4 hours following the match. Ideally, this will start as soon as the match finishes in the changing rooms, potentially with a shake that is high in carbohydrates before you go and eat a full meal.

2)      Protein

General guidelines for protein are to include a source with every meal and snack where possible, and match day is no exception.

Pre-match fuelling meal

In your pre-match meal aim for 0.25 – 0.4 grams of protein per kilogram of body mass – for a 70kg athlete this equates to 17.5 – 28 grams of protein. The image below shows some suggestions of sources of protein on match day. It is also possible to include plant-based sources of protein, but be aware that many of these may also be high in fibre which can cause gastrointestinal discomfort, so use tried and tested sources of protein on matchday if you eat a plant-based diet and try to limit fibre before the match especially.

Post-match recovery

After the match is completed, it is important to include sources of protein to help your muscles repair and adapt – this would ideally be straight away and could be included in a shake that is high in carbohydrates (as previously mentioned) and protein. It is advised to consume 20 – 25 grams of protein in meals and snacks at 3 – 4 hour intervals, so all meals and snacks following the match should include sources of protein.

3)      Hydration

The final important nutrient for match day is fluids as you will likely have lost some fluids before the match, and during through sweat losses.

Pre-match hydration

It’s important that before the match you are in a hydrated state which is achievable by drinking 5 – 7 millilitres of fluids per kilogram of body mass in the 2 – 4 hours before kick-off which will ensure you have enough time to lose excess fluid through urine – for a 70kg athlete this equates to 350 – 490 millilitres. An easy way to check that you are in a hydrated state is by checking the colour of urine, which should be a pale-yellow colour.

During the warm-up and match

Enough fluid should be taken in to replace any that is lost, avoiding drinking too much or too little. This will vary from person to person due to individual sweat rates, so it is important to be aware of how much you tend to sweat which can be observed during training. To measure exactly how much fluid you tend to lose, you could weigh yourself before and after training but remember to consider any fluid that you have taken in or lost through urine between weigh-ins. A loss of 1kg in body mass is a loss of about 1 litre of fluids, so this will help you to gauge how much fluid you should be drinking in a similar situation and to create an individualised hydration plan.

Additionally, if you find that you are a salty sweater this means that you are also losing electrolytes (primarily sodium) through sweating. In this instance, it would also be beneficial to include some electrolytes in your fluids during the match – which could be achieved by drinking a sports drink that includes your fluids, electrolytes, and carbohydrates.

Post-match hydration

Following the match, it is advised to drink more fluids than you lost due to extra losses such as through urine following the match. The guidelines are to replace fluids by 125 - 150% - a loss of 1kg in fluids would equate to 1.25 – 1.5 litres of fluid to consume. Overall, urine colour is again a good way to gauge how hydrated you are following the match – aiming for the pale-yellow colour as you did in pre-match hydration practices.

So those are the three key areas of importance for matchday nutrition, and it is important to find out what works best for you as an individual because your performance and recovery will benefit most when you’ve got all three.

We hope this blog on match day nutrition has been beneficial for you and helps you to see where you could be improving your performance in football with the three key nutrition points/. Make sure to tag us in any pictures of meals or snacks you create from this blog!

References

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Oliveira, C.C., Ferreira, D., Caetano, C., Granja, D., Pinto, R., Mendes, B. and Sousa, M. (2017) Nutrition and Supplementation in Soccer. Sports, 5(28) [First Published online 12th May, 2017] DOI: 10.3390/sports5020028
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