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DEFINING BEST-PRACTICE NUTRITION RECOMMENDATIONS IN PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL: THE UEFA EXPERT GROUP STATEMENT FEATURE / JAMES COLLINS AND ALAN MCCALL The role and impact of nutrition on the health and performance of professional footballers is becoming more prominent within the game. Despite growing popularity and influx of research focused on football nutrition, there have been no clear guidelines for over a decade that can help practitioners make decisions that are evidence-led and practically driven. The last time the football nutrition research was collated, and recommendations given was by FIFA in 2006 (FIFA Consensus), obviously a lot has changed since then, not only in the nutrition landscape but also in the game of football itself. The physical and technical demands of the game have increased in recent years (Bush et al., 2015; Barnes et al., 2014), as well as the financial implication of winning and losing. This impacted many aspects in the sport such as training regimens, travel demands, and cultural diversity. The cultural identity has evolved with an increase in player migration moving between different countries and continents.
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The Expert Group Statement Process The idea was conceived in 2016 whilst working together at Arsenal FC and we published a call for action in 2017 (Collins et al., 2017). Following conversations with UEFA at their headquarters in Nyon, they too recognised this gap and importance in providing some evidenceled recommendations for the European and indeed global football community. This is when the ‘UEFA Expert Statement on Nutrition’ project was born. Together with UEFA, we established a steering committee of Prof. Ron Maughan, Dr Johann Bilsborough, Prof. Mike Gleeson and ourselves, where the first job of the committee was to decide the key topics that should be covered; (1) match day nutrition, (2) training day nutrition, (3) body composition, (4) stressful environments and travel, (5) cultural diversity and dietary considerations, (6) dietary supplements, (7) rehabilitation, (8) referees and (9) junior high-level players.
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Altogether, 31 experts were invited to collaborate on the project coming from nine countries spanning four continents, from research and practical backgrounds working within elite teams (e.g. FC Barcelona, AFC Ajax, Australia Football, French Football Federation and the Mexican Football Association). The recommendations are aimed primarily at senior professional football players (male and female) with specific sub-sections highlighting key points for junior players and also extending to top-level referees. Importantly, the UEFA expert group statement endorses and supports a ‘food first’ philosophy (Collins et al., 2020a). The Coach’s Perspective From the initiation of this project, it was important that this project engaged coaches, an important objective of UEFA for its 55 member associations. We secured the expertise of the iconic and long-term nutrition advocate, Arsène Wenger who has championed the importance of nutrition since working at AS Monaco back in the 1980s. He produced an editorial on ‘the
