Brazilian international Gabriel Jesus said he had to forgo his natural way of life which is to eat a lot of junk and drink Coca-Cola in order to make an impact at Manchester City. He revealed that he also had to employ a personal performance coach in order to enhance his performance.
Gabriel Jesus said he never had it so tough when he was playing at Brazilian club Palmeiras, which he helped to win Copa do Brasil and Brazilian national league title. He also won the best player in the Brazilian league before he joined Manchester City in 2017.
Unlike in the Brazilian league, no room for players to have many bad games. The situation is worse in a club as big as Manchester City and under a world-class coach like Pep Guardiola who doesn’t have any excuse to lose a game. So, he has to sacrifice all the things he loved eating in order to keep up with his responsibility at the club.
To take that further, he brought Andre Cunha all the way from Brazil to Manchester in the United Kingdom to serve as his performance trainer. The responsibility of the personal coach is to complement whatever Gabriel Jesus is being told to do by the technical crew of the club.
Since 2018, Andre Cunha has been keeping the performance of Gabriel Jesus in check and ensuring that he remains on the prominent list of a very critical coach like Pep Guardiola.
The effort of his personal trainer and that of Manchester City‘s coaching crew led by Guardiola helped him to remain relevant in a club filled with a pool of talents. This season alone, Jesus has played 39 games for Pep. In those games, he has scored 18 goals and made 9 assists to keep Manchester City in the UEFA Champions League and second on the league table.
“Before I came to Manchester City, I worked differently at my old club Palmeiras”, he told Sky Sports. “I came here and I stayed for the first year and I felt something different.
“Pizza, bread, I loved all that. I loved the burgers. That was all so bad for me and my body. But this was my life before Andre came.
“I asked Manchester City if I could try to do something at home with somebody who could come to see me so I found Andre and he is a top guy, a top professional. He knows everything so he has helped me a lot. Now my nutrition is much better than before, for sure. I don’t go crazy. I had to think ahead so I stopped with all that.”
