Chelsea frontman Kai Havertz isn’t your standard Footballer.
He isn’t the most expressive on the pitch or the flashiest off it. He doesn’t come under the brackets of skillful or physically dominant. And his best position still remains a mystery to many fans and pundits alike.
Havertz also has some pretty unique hobbies.
Instead of jetting off to exotic locations, the 23-year-old prefers to spend his pastime by being around donkeys and various animals.
With all these distinctions present already, it comes as little surprise to find out that Havertz has some pretty bizarre dietary habits.
The Chelsea man hasn’t quite hit his stride at Stamford Bridge yet, despite joining the London outfit nearly 3 seasons ago.
While there have been short-lived spells of consistent performances, Havertz is yet to extend them to the course of an entire season. Which has begged the question of ‘what gives?’
His lack of goals certainly hasn’t been the result of a lack of trying, as the forward recently revealed his attempts at adopting a professional diet.
The admission came during an interview with Kai Pflaume, with Havertz saying, ‘So honestly, last summer I completely changed my diet and had a nutritionist. I just wanted to become a bit more professional and everything like that. Did that for half a year actually and we had a cook in London at the beginning, who came every day and cooked for us. And I have to say, I did not feel good at all, this had the complete opposite effect on me.’
He continued, ‘He [the nutritionist] said to me, because I’m a total sugar freak, you probably noticed I drink Coke after the game and I need sweets and stuff because that gives me strength and energy, he said to stop completely with it. I stopped completely and that had the opposite effect on me.’
Dietary habits and limitations have turned into an essential element of Sports, with Football clubs even hiring Nutritionists, Data scientists, Chefs, etc to assure that players are in incredible shape.
Cutting out processed foods and sugar is known to be a mandatory requirement to play at the top level, especially since these items bring plenty of harm to the body.
With this added context, Havertz’s statements came across as a bit jarring initially, but it is important that every individual is wired differently.
This is the fact that even Chelsea’s staff ended up conceding to, as stated by Havertz himself;
‘We got a nutritionist at Chelsea and he completely went the other policy and said ‘Kai you need the Fanta, you need the Coke, drink one a day. At half-time, I get gummy bears, Skittles, or something. He completely followed the other policy and then I said ok, I’ll do it again and that moved the push in my body and I was full of energy again.’
Hearing such a reaction to excess sugar is almost unheard of for an athlete, but clearly, it looks to be doing the trick for Havertz. Chelsea fans will be hoping that the forward comes across a sweet treat that fixes his consistency issues as well.
