Good for the preparation is bad for the team's coffers: despite Christmas feasting, no FCB professional has returned from the winter break overweight.
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- Many clubs have fines in their catalog of fines if professional footballers return to training after the vacations with excess weight. FC Basel is no exception.
- The amount of the fine is determined according to the number of kilos, says Ludovic Magnin. After the Christmas vacations, not a single franc went into the team's coffers. Despite the festive season, there was no time to put on weight.
- FCB defender Flavius Daniliuc was surprised that he had completed the test as well as before the break. This despite the fact that he did not hold back. "We had soup, salad and various starters as our Christmas menu. Shawarma for the main course and tiramisu for dessert."
Basel's defensive boss Flavius Daniliuc goes into raptures when blue Sport asks him about the festive season and the Daniliuc family's Christmas menu at the training camp in Marbella. "Mom prepares everything for us, she's the boss, the queen. We have soup, salad and various starters. Shawarma for the main course and tiramisu for dessert."
Daniliuc says that he didn't hold back, but went for it: "There have been too many games in the last few months, too much sacrifice." Afterwards, however, he completed runs and went to the gym. "If you come to this training camp unprepared, you will definitely feel it."
The players were deliberately given the first few days off, says Carlos Menéndez, FC Basel's athletics coach, "for the second part, we proposed six time slots in which they could choose between a minimum of three and a maximum of six training sessions."
"Mental freshness is very important to us this year"
The right dosage is crucial; every player reacts differently, says Menéndez. Coach Ludovic Magnin: "We had an intense period with 30 games before Christmas. That's why we decided that mental freshness is very important and that we should do as few mandatory sessions as possible over Christmas and New Year."
The players then have to turn up for a test at the start of training, where all kinds of data is taken - weight is by no means the only thing that is checked. Daniliuc: "I actually completed the test just as well as I did before the break. At first I thought I would come back with one or two kilos more because I went to the gym more and trained more upper body. But my fighting weight is still the same as it was before Christmas."
Not a single FCB player is overweight, so there is no money for the team's coffers. "At FC Basel, there is a fine for being overweight," says coach Ludovic Magnin, "but the break was also much shorter than usual. If someone had come back overweight now, they would have had to seriously overdo it."
One of his former teammates would certainly have managed this despite the shortened Christmas break. Brazilian shot-stopper Ailton, with whom Magnin won the German championship with Werder Bremen in 2004, filled the team's coffers after the Christmas break. Magnin laughs and says: "First of all, you have to know that Ailton was never actually there at the start of training. He always went on vacation for a week or two longer. He always had an extra two weeks to eat. When he got back into training, he was no longer the shot-stopper, he was just the ball."