The Effects of Ramadan on Professional Footballers

Please note that this article is not about condemning a religion or its practices. Every person is able and should always be able to choose their own religion and follow its practices as their conscience guides them, as far as I'm concerned. I'm merely trying to establish a link between the fasting ritual and the supposed negative effects on professional footballers.

Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic Calendar. It is the Islamic month of fasting in which participating Muslims refrain from eating, drinking, smoking, and indulging in anything that is in excess or ill-natured; from dawn until sunset.

Fasting is meant to teach the Muslim patience, modesty and spirituality. Ramadan is a time for Muslims to fast for the sake of Allah, and to offer more prayer than usual.

During Ramadan, Muslims ask forgiveness for past sins, pray for guidance and help in refraining from everyday evils, and try to purify themselves through self-restraint and good deeds. As compared to solar calendar, the dates of Ramadan vary, moving forward about ten days each year as it is a moving festival depending on the moon.

Ramadan was the month in which the first verses of the Qur'an were claimed to have been revealed to the Prophet Muhammad.

Now this fasting, which basically means no eating and drinking from sunset until dawn, leads to some difficulties for Muslim footballers. I mean, let’s be honest here, playing an intensive football match on a professional level requires energy and players need to be on their best.

Many people seem to think that the Ramadan impacts the preparations of Muslim players in a negative manner though. Let’s take Internazionale’s Sulley Muntari as an example. The Ghanaian midfielder found himself substituted in one of his team’s matches after only half an hour, with coach Jose Mourinho claiming his performance had been poor because Muntari lacked energy due to his fast.

Muntari isn’t the only one with such a problem, as many Muslim football players encounter difficulties with their employers during the Ramadan. These players generally don’t seem to perform as well as they normally would have during a match.

I’m not just making this up, Mourinho’s substitution is just one of many examples. For example, PSV have always kept and still keep their Moroccan players on the bench if possible during Ramadan. Adil Ramzi in the past and Nordin Amrabat and Ibrahim Afellay in the present don’t play as much as they usually do.

Udinese midfielder Gokhan Inler takes it all a step further, as he doesn’t fast at all, because he feels this is detrimental to his performance.

Further evidence can be found when looking at the African Champions League, in which the teams with a predominantly Muslim squad all failed to beat the teams with mostly Christians in their squad. Tunisian side Etoile du Sahel drew at home with Nigerian Heartland, Nigerian-based Kano Pillars defeated Sudanese Al-Hilal and Zambian Zesco United grabbed a draw away to Sudan’s Al-Merreikh.

In light of these development, it should be interesting to see how the African World Cup Qualifiers this weekend unfold. Will the teams feel the impact of the Ramadan? The Egyptian FA seems to think so, as they announced their squad would have a break from fasting on the match day, as the Pharaohs face off against Ruanda this weekend.

With football becoming increasingly more about money, teams are determined to get the best out of their players. It leads to no surprise that several medical investigations were done regarding the effects of fasting on professional footballers. After some searching, I even found an article with such information on Goal.com.

The conclusions were not quite as I expected. I quote: "In other words, we can take three main points from this selection of recent studies: that, if controlled without optimization, fasting can have a negative effect (both perceived and actual) on some players; that there are ways to minimise the risk of decreased performance; and that regulating food and water intake during the non-fast hours is perhaps the biggest key to any successful strategy."

This basically means that clubs are not paying enough attention to their Muslim players. With the proper medical care and aid, they could have some of their star players performing as if nothing happened. That would make a big difference to some club teams, let alone of the difference it would make for certain nations.

So how is it that some of these multi-million clubs like for example Internazionale, haven't picked up on this? They spend millions and millions on every other aspect of medical care for their players, but they neglect an area like this one, which could potentially maximise the performances of a talented midfielder for a full month.

It seems that Real Madrid have taken this step already, as Lassana Diarra, Mahamadou Diarra, and Karim Benzema are all allowed to fast as club doctors have designed a special program to keep the players hydrated as training in the intense Spanish summer heat without being able to take on fluids can lead weakness and possibly to serious injury, while some level of weight loss is a normal feature of the fasting process. 

This programme seems to be working as well, as two of the three aforementioned players played during Real's 3-2 win over Deportivo, with Lassana Diarra playing the full 90 minutes and scoring a spectacular goal.

It should be interesting to see if more clubs pick up on this trend of spending some extra money to take care of their Muslim stars. It could provide a necessary boost for some teams.