Rice rice flake porridge with pear compote, one-pot spinach quinoa with egg, millet-mandarin muesli or rice balls with cucumber: Anyone who tried to make such dishes tasty for young footballers 20 years ago would have met with considerable reservations - carefully said.

Today, nutrition is an important factor in athletic success.

Also in the football industry.

Bernd Steinle

Editor in the section “Germany and the World”.

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    Stefan Pappert experienced this first hand. He cooked at the 2008 European Football Championship and at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, and is now head chef at the top English club, Arsenal, among other things. “The subject of nutrition has changed almost as much over the years as football itself. It used to be that the players ate a schnitzel and a portion of spaetzle before the game. Today the physical demands are so much higher that they inevitably deal with the topic of food and are more enlightened. ”This is how Pappert describes the development in the book“ Hans Sarpeis Fußballküche ”, with which the former professional soccer player Sarpei wants to explain the importance of nutrition to young soccer players .

    Sarpei was active for VfL Wolfsburg and FC Schalke 04, among others, he won the DFB Cup with Schalke in 2011, took part in the 2010 World Cup with Ghana and acquired the A license as a football coach in 2015. If he were 20 years old today, he would pay different attention to nutrition, he writes. “It wasn't like that back then, nobody talked about it.” He wants to fill this gap for today's offspring. For this he has gained prominent and expert support, such as the former national players Per Mertesacker and Arne Friedrich as well as the nutritionist Claudia Osterkamp-Baerens.

    Sarpei is consistently about young readers: He explains the basics, restricts himself to the most important points, formulates catchy, presents clearly.

    First and foremost, he explains why the preoccupation with nutrition can be worthwhile for football players at all: because eating and drinking influence physical performance, because they can give you the decisive edge over your competitors, and because it is up to each player to make use of this advantage - independent of trainers, teachers, parents.

    Cook quickly and for everyone

    The following are eating tips for breakfast, lunch and dinner, for the hours before training, for the game day and the time to regenerate. The recipes are not overwhelming with sophisticated subtleties, they are quick and easy to cook for everyone. And the menu isn't limited to porridge, millet, and quinoa - it also offers lahmacun, steak burgers, scrambled egg wrap, and banana bread. It also explains why it is important to drink enough while exercising, why the use of dietary supplements can be dangerous and how ambiguous the role of sugar is for athletes.

    As the extroverted personality of the former “Let's Dance” winner Sarpei suggests, the book is not a bad-tempered catalog of prohibitions that threatens to create gloomy horror scenarios if oatmeal and soy milk are not consumed every day. "Hans Sarpeis Fußballküche" is a guide geared towards young athletes' needs and their possibilities and preferences, which whets the appetite to use the advantages of healthy eating in order to increase your own performance - without having to chastise yourself when choosing food. After all, it's all about figuring out what works best for you. And to feel comfortable with it.