'Never change': The key to preparing for a Champions League final
How do you prepare for a Champions League final?
After years of work, you are one game away from glory, from history. How do you sleep? How do you gear yourself up to arrive at the stadium without the nerves taking over?
Who better to ask than two Champions League winners? With Inter back in a Champions League final against Paris Saint-Germain this week, two heroes from the 2010 treble-winning side sat down Just Eat's Legendary Table at San Siro and revealed the secret is to change nothing.
"We were always ourselves, a game is just a game that we wanted to win," Wesley Sneijder said, when talking about how to prepare for the biggest matches.
"We always came together, the same people, and we had a drink (the night before) to go to sleep, to make you relax and have a good sleep, and we were always ready the next day.
"That was our spirit, never change.
Sneijder went on to explain that manager José Mourinho stood up to Inter's sponsors on that occasion, when the players were being pressured to change one part of their pre-match routine ahead of the 2-0 win over Bayern Munich at the Bernabéu.
"We went to the final, for example, and the sponsors wanted us to go in a suit," Sneijder recalled.
"Mourinho said: 'We've travelled like gypsies, we will also go the the final like gypsies'."
And there was one more key detail, as pointed out by Marco Materazzi when it came to the pre-match meal:
"Carbonara too, before the game, of course!"
Well, of course.
📸 JAVIER SORIANO - 2010 AFP
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