The team meal is a ritual pretending to be a plan

Everyone eats the same thing at the same hour, which suits the catering and suits almost nobody else.

Three hours before kickoff the whole squad sits down to the same pasta at the same time, because that is what the club does and has always done. A ninety kilo forward who will run four kilometres and a midfielder who will run twelve get an identical plate, and a goalkeeper who feels sick if he eats within four hours of a match gets it too.

The ritual has genuine value and I would not throw it away. Sitting down together settles a group, it puts a marker in the day, it stops people drifting around a hotel on their phones, and shared routine before a big event does something real for nerves. Fine. Keep the table.

What should go is the pretence that the timing and the content are a nutrition plan rather than a catering arrangement. They were chosen because a kitchen can produce them for thirty people at once, and the hour was chosen because it fits the coach travel schedule. Those are logistics decisions being worn as science.

The individual variation here is large and coaches know it anecdotally without acting on it. Some athletes cannot eat close to competition and will pick at a plate to avoid being seen not eating, then play underfuelled. Others need something an hour later and are not allowed it because the kitchen is closed. Positional demands differ by a factor of three in some sports. None of that is exotic.

A workable compromise is a fixed table and a flexible plate. Everyone attends. Everyone sits down at the same time, because that part is about the group. What goes on the plate, and what gets taken away for later, is individual, planned in advance, and not a topic for comment from anybody else.

The last piece is the thing coaches enforce hardest and understand least, which is the ban on anything unfamiliar on the day. That one is correct. Match day is the wrong moment to introduce a new food, and the right moment was a training day six weeks ago when nobody bothered.

Keep the ritual for what it does. Stop calling it a plan, because it was designed by a kitchen.