Winning the World Cup used to be as simple as coaxing high-class footballers to play brilliantly together. Yet the team who come out on top this summer are likely to have used everything from custom-made pizzas to individual sweat tests in their pursuit of glory.
England will begin their latest attempt to break a six-decade major trophy drought against Croatia on Wednesday, with temperatures in Dallas expected to reach the mid-thirties.
The players are likely to lose up to 4kg in the heat and humidity. Many have played for two years with barely a rest and arrived in North America and Mexico feeling the mental and physical strain of such a long, unbroken run of top-level football.
This is where the team behind the team come in. The top nations including England now have an army of support staff monitoring the players’ every move.
Sports medicine and performance specialist Dominic Rae was first-team physio at Aston Villa for two years under Unai Emery and is now working for Dubai club Al-Nasr in the UAE Pro League. He believes that these unseen factors could determine who wins the tournament.
‘There are lots of different pillars – the travel, the small time differences, the heat, the humidity, the altitude in a couple of places,’ Rae told Daily Mail Sport.
England’s stars are likely to lose up to 4kg in the heat and humidity during the tournament
‘So the teams who have prepared the best will put themselves in the best position to win the World Cup. If things aren’t managed relatively perfectly you’ll start to see some pretty big physical and physiological changes over the course of the tournament.
‘The big thing for athletes is routine. You keep players in their rhythm as they know what works for them and it’s important to ensure everything stays slick and everything is on time. As soon as things go out of whack – for example, if a mealtime moves by 90 minutes unexpectedly – it can have a negative knock-on effect. And all these aspects are at risk with the travel, the time differences and the scheduling.’
Water breaks have been a controversial feature of the tournament already, with some coaches, including USA boss Mauricio Pochettino, questioning the need for interruptions when weather conditions are normal.
Rae explains that the water breaks themselves will have only minimal effect. Rather, every player will have to follow a highly tailored hydration plan throughout the tournament.
After England’s opener against Croatia, they face Ghana in Boston on June 23. While the medical team can use the water breaks to bring down players’ body temperatures, Rae says that ‘the breaks are part of the hydration strategy but if they’re your entire plan, you’re in trouble.’
Players must drink enough water and also ensure they replace electrolytes such as sodium. Maintaining a healthy balance of electrolytes – the key ones also include potassium and magnesium – is crucial for athletes to perform at their peak.
‘Hydration is not something players have to think about too much during an English domestic season,’ said Rae. ‘But at this World Cup, we’re seeing higher temperatures and higher humidity, while travel causes dehydration too.
‘Your hydration strategy isn’t only about the day of the game. It’s about how you rehydrate after the game four or five days earlier.
‘For example, if you train at the wrong time or the wrong temperature for a day or two before the game, you could go into it dehydrated. Then you’re behind the black ball and you can’t perform.
‘Players can lose 3-4kg in a game, and they will lose over 1,000 mg of sodium per litre of sweat, plus other electrolytes.
Players are set to have their own personal hydration strategy, according to a sports scientist
‘I have used sweat testing on players to know the exact composition of their sweat. So if we know Harry Kane, for example, sweats at a certain rate and what the sweat is composed of, we can tailor his hydration strategy accordingly.
‘Some teams will take urine samples from the players on matchdays, probably after the pre-match meal, taking hydration markers from that and reacting to them.’
As well as working for Al-Nasr, Rae is Head of Sports Medicine and Performance Specialist at Ten Percent Club. One of the leading supplement brands in professional sport, they work with top footballers including Aston Villa star Matty Cash and England international Beth Mead.
Having worked in an elite environment at Villa, Rae knows the importance of refuelling and has revealed the innovative methods chefs and nutritionists use to ensure players are eating correctly.
During the late 2000s and early 2010s, it was normal to see players munching on a slice of pizza as they left the stadium. It was a strange sight – but there is a little more to it.
‘Nutrition teams will still give pizza now but they won’t be ordered from a local takeaway,’ Rae explains. ‘Sometimes you’re in a battle after the game: players might not want to eat, but we need to get food into them.
‘You need to give them something edible and digestible and performance chefs are incredible, really clever. They’ll have a meal that will ordinarily be quite boring and turn it into a pizza – an organic tortilla wrap, super low-fat cheese, home-made tomato puree.
‘Then they’ll add ground chicken that’s very easy to eat as well as finely ground peppers and onions. It’s still a pizza but not a doughy one and you’re gaining the same things as from a bucket of rice, a load of chicken and some broccoli, which nobody is going to want to eat in 30-degree heat.
‘The day before and after a game, players will avoid slow-digesting foods like red meat. The staples are chicken, turkey, white fish and eggs because they digest quickly.’
So we have micro-managed eating and drinking schedules, sweat tests and routines planned to the second. Not to mention individual pillows and duvets, hotel rooms set to specific temperatures or blue-light glasses to minimise the effects of phone and tablet screens.
Exhaustive, certainly. But it all sounds a bit boring, too. When England have failed at a major tournament, stories about players being fed up around the camp have usually followed, with South Africa in 2010 a memorable example.
That leads to Rae’s final and perhaps most important message: enjoy yourselves.
‘I’ve worked with these guys and they are tired,’ he says. ‘They don’t get breaks. Players have rolled through for two seasons and camp settings can become a bit like Groundhog Day. Levels of cortisol (known as the ‘stress hormone’) are chronically elevated and that affects sleep.
England players will also have a lot of downtime at their Kansas City base between matches
‘You need to switch off and a key part of the recovery is about how you can make it fun? Can you give them a golf day? If they’re in the pool recovering let’s turn it into water polo. Let’s play head tennis.
‘I know in past tournaments teams have lost games and been pictured on the golf course or having lilo races. They’ve been hammered by fans and media but it’s important. The worst thing you can do is train more.
‘You need to be brave and not worry about the kickback if you go on the golf course after a defeat. If you can make the camp a fun place to be, everything else falls into place quite nicely.’
By all accounts, the players are enjoying life at their Kansas City base and the spirit in the squad is good. It might just be the first brick in the wall.
