9 Soccer Nutrition Strategies to Enhance Soccer Performance
Many soccer players dream of winning and being a champion. How do great players like Lionel Messi have such long careers? How does Patrick Mahomes and Tom Brady eat to perform at such high levels…?
I want to perform the best I can at the soccer tryouts. Can you give me any nutrition tips to help me reach my goal?
These are just some of the questions I get from athletes who want to eat to win. My (biased) answer is that what and when you eat matters! While many excellent soccer players seem to do well with random fueling plans, How much better could they be? 
While wise fueling plans certainly can enhance athletic performance, many other factors determine whether or not you will get to the winners’ circle. Physiological factors include: muscle damage/soreness, lactic acid build-up, depleted muscle glycogen, low blood glucose, inability to concentrate/poor brain function, under-hydration, high body temperature, gut distress, and injury.
Now add environmental factors that you cannot control: heat, humidity, wind, floods, and altitude, as well as the game start-time, time between games, jet lag, and travel-fatigue. No wonder eager-to-win players want to rule-out making any food mistakes. Hence, this article focuses on nutrition strategies you can control to benefit your performance.
Soccer Nutrition Strategy 1:
Whole-grain breads, pasta, sweet potatoes, quinoa, and other starchy carbs—plus fruits and veggies—should be the foundation of every meal.
Stop thinking carbs are bad, fattening, a waste of calories. False! The body prefers carbs to replenish muscle glycogen stores that deplete during hard exercise. Training or competing with “dead muscles” is needless and hurts performance.
Soccer Nutrition Strategy 2:
All athletes need a well-fueled brain. If you have not eaten a meal 3 to 4 hours before your exercise, at least eat 200-ish calories of carbs within the hour before you play to help keep your brain sharp so you can focus and stay motivated to work at a hard pace.
For a personalized fueling plan that maintains your blood sugar (and feeds the brain), consult with a registered dietitian (RD)/ board certified specialist in sports dietetics (CSSD). To find your local RD CSSD, use the referral networks at eatright.org or healthprofs.com.
Implement your fueling plan during training, so you have time to tweak it. During a tournament, you don’t want to be guessing if a new gel will digest well…
Soccer Nutrition Strategy 3:
Commercial sports foods (sports drinks, gels, chomps, jellybeans, etc.) are pre-wrapped and convenient, but not magical.
“Real” foods (dried pineapple, crystalized ginger, peppermints, granola bars, diluted grape juice) also work just as well, if not better, before and during extended exercise.
Soccer Nutrition Strategy 4:
Learn in advance what foods/fluids will be available at a tournament. (Check website for sponsors.) You’ll likely be better off bringing plenty of your own tried-and-true foods that you know will settle well and be readily available—and get enough to share with your running buddies?
Soccer Nutrition Strategy 5:
Maintain adequate hydration during repeated days of hard training. Your goal is to void a significant volume of light-colored urine first-thing in the morning. That indicates you’re starting the day adequately hydrated.
In laboratory-based research, a>3% loss of body weight is linked to reduced performance. In real life, many athletes perform well at higher levels of dehydration. Their motivation to win overrides the effects of being underhydrated and lessens its negative impact. But the question remains unanswered: Could underhydrated soccer players have performed even better if they were better hydrated?
Think again if you think a sports supplement will take you to the winner’s circle. So-called ergogenic aids are only for athletes who have optimized their daily sports diet. No amount of supplementation will compensate for a poor sports diet.
Soccer Nutrition Strategy 6:
That said, some supplements might enhance performance.
These include:
Creatine monohydrate. Supplements have been shown to increase muscle creatine stores by ~20% and can help you do more repeated sprints. Creatine supplements can be beneficial for vegetarians, given dietary creatine is found primarily in meat.
NOTE: Sporting organizations tend to discourage the use of creatine in youth soccer players and other athletes, not because it will harm them, but because they have yet to learn what their bodies can do naturally. Youth athletes should focus on improving skills more than on taking supplements.
Caffeine can reduce the perception of pain, effort, and fatigue—even in soccer players who regularly drink coffee. You can consume caffeine via gels, caffeinated energy bars, pre-workout supplements, tablets, and coffee. The problem with coffee is that the caffeine content is highly variable, making it hard to define a specific dose. The “best” dose varies from athlete to athlete.
Soccer Nutrition Strategy 7:
Simply rinsing your mouth with a sugar solution (then spitting it out) stimulates reward centers in the brain, allowing you to work harder and perform better.
Sugar doesn’t need to be absorbed into the body to offer benefits.
Soccer Nutrition Strategy 8:
Menthol-containing mouth rinses every 5-10 minutes during prolonged exercise in the heat can allow players to feel cooler, work harder, and run faster. But be careful. If you feel cooler but actually are not, you might overexert yourself and end up hurting your performance in the long run.
Soccer Nutrition Strategy 9:
Anti-cramping agents such as pickle juice, capsaicin, cinnamon, ginger, or hot or spicy tastes may “distract” the nerves involved with the cramping muscle and may reduce the risk/severity of a muscle cramp. (More research is needed.)
Nancy Clark MS RD CSSD counsels both fitness exercisers and competitive athletes in the Boston-area (617-962-4382). Her best-selling Sports Nutrition Guidebook is a popular resource. Visit NancyClarkRD.com for more information.
