FC Basel has clear rules: players who return overweight after the winter break must pay a fine. But this year, the scales remained unburdened. Head coach Ludovic Magnin also recalled his former teammate Ailton.
“No one came back overweight. But the break was also much shorter than usual,” Ludovic Magnin explained in an interview with blue Sport. The players only had a few days to relax between Christmas and New Year’s, which made it difficult to overeat.
Every player has their own ideal weight, which is crucial for their performance on the pitch. “My fighting weight as a Bundesliga player, for example, was 79 kilos, and at the end of my career at FC Zurich it was 82 kilos. You notice those three kilos in the intensity, in the runs, in the maximum speed,” says Magnin. Weight control is essential today, even if coaches like Pep Guardiola were ridiculed in the past for their strict methods. “Now everyone knows why it was so important to him.”
For Magnin himself, things are looking less rosy at the moment. “You don’t want to know!” he replies with a laugh when asked about his current weight. “At the moment, I’m afraid to step on the scales. It’s in a range I never wanted to be in. That’s just the way it is. I’ve lost my ambition at the moment.“ The FC Basel coach admits that his love of food and lack of exercise – just a few hours of padel tennis per week – are exacerbating the problem. ”I need to pay more attention to my diet and do more exercise.”
Short winter break also had advantages
However, the short winter break brought advantages for the team. “It’s generally said that you don’t lose much in the first two weeks of the holidays, but from the third week onwards, if you don’t do anything, you slowly start to lose fitness,” explains Magnin. After an intense period with 30 games before Christmas, the coaching staff decided to give the players a week off. They then had to complete three individual training sessions, with the fitness coach staying in contact. “If he noticed that a player wasn’t doing anything, he would call him and remind him.”
Magnin also thinks back to his own playing days, especially Ailton, his former teammate at Werder Bremen. “I immediately thought of Ailton. But first you have to know that Ailton was never actually there when training started. He always took an extra week or two of vacation. That gave him two more weeks to eat.“ The Brazilian often returned to training late and overweight. ”When he did come back to training, he was no longer the lightning bolt, just a bolt,” Magnin recalls with a laugh.
Nevertheless, Ailton remained successful on the pitch and scored 28 goals in the championship season. “You have to know that back then in Bremen, there was also Coke or Fanta on the tables. And of course, Ailton hardly drank any water. Let’s put it this way: his diet at the time was certainly not to his advantage. But of course, soccer wasn’t as intense back then as it is today.”