Two Lives Collide - Ramadan and Athletics

I know Kei Kamara here in KC said he wouldn’t be observing it either. I just wonder the amount of judgment athletes face back home when they choose not to observe. Surely friends and family understand…right?

Husain Abdullah, now a cornerback for the Baltimore Ravens, adheres to Ramadan during arguably the toughest part of the NFL season: training camp. I’m in awe that it’s possible to survive camp and two-a-days without food or water, but it sounds like they’ve figured out how to manage it all.

I wonder if Muslim athletes are burdened by the perceptions of their coaches more than anything else. If the coach has the idea that Ramadan means barely eating (and thus not having the caloric base to produce the energy required to play anything that well), then even the most sensitive coach will think “OK, I won’t hold this against the player, but if his performance drops, I’ll have to move him to the bench for the time being.”

My point is that Muslim players might be looking to delay or change their Ramadan observance for two less-obvious reasons. First, they may be convinced by coaches that fasting will impact their play, even though the coach may have no experience with the matter (and may not even fully understand what Ramadan involves). Second, the player may be well aware that perceptions about Ramadan differ from reality, but he or she may conclude that changing their observance will reassure the coach, thus not endangering their status within the team.

As for the study you’re quoting from, Dave, it matches my friend’s experience. A buddy of mine is married to an observant Muslim, and in an effort to help her get through Ramadan he joins her in fasting. I should note that he’s very big into fitness (works at a gym, coaches lifters and also competes in Olympic lifting). A few years ago, fasting made him fairly miserable, but he says that the difference came when he found a way to fit naps into his schedule. Granted, for most of that time he’s been a full-time student (and even when he was working full time, he convinced them to give him 2 hours off the clock at mid-day to sleep on his office floor). Now, he fasts with only a small difference in performance towards the end of the month.

His way won’t work for most people, because most people aren’t grad students that somehow convince the boss to let them sleep at work. However, for Nyassi (and other soccer players), your daily schedule probably allows plenty of time to nap. People tend to undervalue sleep in general, but there’s a reason so many MLS players talk about sleeping 8-9 hours and still napping here and there on top of that.

…not signing players that hurt your team?

If a guy’s religious beliefs prevented him from kicking a soccer ball on Tuesdays, would you sign him? How about if it were Tuesdays through Fridays?

The point here is that Lotito isn’t saying “I won’t sign Muslims”. He doesn’t care about that. He cares about building a soccer team, and so if a guy “has that problem” (ie, fasts) then he isn’t going to sign him.

I’m all for religious diversity and respecting people’s choices. Hell, I’m a member of a decidedly minority religion myself!

The reality, though, is if you’re a guy who already only weighs 145 pounds (like Sanna) and you lose 7 or 8 pounds? You’re going to be weak. This is a guy who starts with pretty low body fat already, so if he lost that much weight, you have to figure it’s mostly muscle mass.

Add to that the dehydration problems and how much his training will be hampered, and I think there’s a perfectly good argument that a fasting player will almost certainly not perform as well as he could if he weren’t fasting.

Yes, yes, they can eat, just that it has to be after sundown… we’re pretty far north here. That makes for shorter nights and longer daytimes. Ramadan moves through the year, too, since it’s a lunar deal; by 2015 Ramadan will start on June 18th. End result: Not a lot of time for eating.

I believe that the likelihood of a fasting player losing some ability is high enough that for a club to not sign fasting players (for whatever reason) is perfectly acceptable. It’s not as though they’re saying “we don’t sign black dudes”; they’re saying “we don’t sign guys who have a high chance of being unable to perform their job”.

If that makes me an idiot, so be it, but I wouldn’t expect someone to sign a player who hurts his own career on a regular basis.