In the modern era of professional sport, an athlete's diet is regarded as nearly as important - if not as important - as the actual training they undertake. Five-time Super Bowl winner Tom Brady has a famously strict diet that avoids white sugar, white flour, tomatoes and most fruit and is 80 per cent vegetable-based (according to his personal chef). Gone are the days of Harry Ramsden challenges the day before important European qualifier matches.
So it's no surprise that one of the world's best strikers is fastidious about what he puts into his body. Robert Lewandowski has been absolutely flying for Bayern Munich this season with 23 goals in 27 games for the German side in the 2016/17 campaign. The Polish forward has given a brilliant interview to Dominick King of the Daily Mail in which he has outlined what he eats - and what he doesn't - to try and get himself in the perfect condition for scoring goals:
I know what I need and it isn't every day because that isn't good.
Sometimes for breakfast I eat cornflakes, sometimes eggs, sometimes (steak) tartare. It's better like this. I don't have a strict diet where I have to eat 100g of this, 200g of that, but before I had a problem with sweet things so I cut them out completely.
Three or four years ago I had to eat a sweet thing every day but now I don't eat them anymore. Maybe sometimes I will eat some dark chocolate but nothing else. It's much better like this. Now if I see some chocolate or cake on the table I just don't want it.
Before I found that if I played three games in a week I couldn't perform for 90 minutes and I couldn't play to my best level all the time. Now I feel much better because I prepare properly. We changed our diet step by step, first cutting out sweets and then milk. Cows' milk and soya milk isn't good for me. Almond milk and rice milk is OK. I don't really drink alcohol, either. Maybe wine but only sometimes.
Steak for breakfast! On a footballer's wage, anything is possible (meanwhile, we're desperately trawling the internet for an athletic diet that does involve chocolate and beer).
Lewandowski also talks about the time he nearly joined Blackburn - but was stopped from doing so by the Icelandic ash cloud - as well as the bets he used to make with Jurgen Klopp in training that he thinks improved his game at Borussia Dortmund. Read the fascinating full piece here.
(Daily Mail)
