New Staff Role - Nutritionist

[oko030]

A lot of top level clubs have leaned towards integrating hiring nutritionists/specialists into their staff setups. To deal with such things as: pre-season, pre- & post-training, and pre- & post-match nutrition. 

I think having the role in-game would be awesome, as they're often a key part of maintaining the fitness of a team over the strenuous footballing season, as well as reducing the injury probability of individual players. (Think 'Silvia Tremoleda', formerly at Barcelona and now at Man City with Pep Guardiola, who redefined Lionel Messi's personal nutrition & dietary plan to bring him out of a period of recurring niggling injuries.)

[Lux Thunder]

Agree, I was thinking about the same feature as well.

There is no top club in the world of football without one added to the regular staff and their importance to today's football is somehow overlooked in Football Manager simulation. The pressure is one of the main characteristics of modern football and maintaining pressure during football game demands very good to excellent body shape, natural fitness, stamina and having an established nutritionist along with other members of club's staff may be a key to excel that.

For example, one of the best nutritionists in the world of football is 32 – year old Mona Nemmer is currently employed by Liverpool where she was appointed in 2016. Previously, she was part of Pep Guardiola's staff during his tenure at Bayern Munich. Pep Guardiola also introduce Silvia Tremoleda as a nutritionist at Manchester City and also worked with her before in Barcelona, as you mentioned before. Both managers are well known for high-intensity football and both are considered to be very best in the game.

This is how I see it:

1. This role should regularly feature in top clubs, but for lower league clubs you should work your way to have one requesting your board to allow you bringing one.

2.  Attributes for this role should be more similar to sports science and medical staff than the coaching ones with the following key attributes:

• Man management
• Adaptability*
• Nutritionism

*Adaptability means adapting to player's requests, cultural (food) differences but also to understand that goalkeepers don't run and cover as much field as midfield players or full-backs.

3.  Having this staff role as one currently still evaluating in game, newgens specialized for this role should feature during saves similarly to HOYD newgens.

4. Having none or nutritionist with bad attributes required for this role results:

•  Having more players absent due to food poisoning;
•  Taking less water intake than it's preferred which leads to both losing concentration or/and dehydration of muscles and increased risk of fatigue and other injuries;
•  Reducing the energy level in the last minutes of the game;
•  More time needed to recover after the match and between two matches.

 

5.  A nutritionist can be employed part or full time for both national team or/and club but also they can be individually hired by players. Newgens with personality traits such as ambitious or perfectionist are more likely to individually hire their own nutritionist.

6.  Nutritionist's recommendations can be reported to manager similar to the medical team report or as a part of it.

7.  Having the nutrition department and organized meals in the club can also lead to players better knowing each other with results similar to team bonding effect.

[Kyle Brown]

Reviewed so locked.