Cooling vests, performance chefs and personalized mattresses: Dealing with the demands of World Cup 2026

It is often said that winning a World Cup is a team effort, one that extends beyond the eleven players on the field. In addition to the playing squad and the coaching staff, each nation’s performance team will play a vital role in preparation, nutrition and recovery across the tournament.

Few people know more about that process than James Morton, Chief Science Officer at Science in Sport and Professor of Exercise Metabolism at Liverpool John Moores University.

Morton was formerly the Head of Nutrition Performance for Liverpool FC and the Nutrition and Physical Performance Lead with cycling’s Team Sky across five Tour de France wins. Speaking to AS USA, he describes this summer’s tournament as “one of the most complex World Cups for performance teams to manage,” with venues spanning three vast countries across an entire continent.

“Of course, there have been hotter World Cups, but there have been none that have had the combination of travel, heat and altitude in the way that 2026 presents,“ he explains. “From a sport science perspective, the teams who manage the environment, rest and recovery are likely to be the teams who can maintain a certain level of performance further into the tournament.”

Players may be facing intense heat, sweltering humidity and high altitude - depending on their schedule - and performance staff will need to ensure that they are ready for whatever challenge arises. Here’s how the top teams will be preparing as they take on soccer’s greatest prize...

Spain feel the heat

One of the most interesting conditioning scenarios of the 2026 World Cup group stage is that of Spain, the reigning European champions. The team’s base is in Chattanooga, where they will be experiencing the extreme heat of the Tennessee summer. However their first two games were played in the fully air-conditioned Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, before heading to Guadalajara to play the last of three group stage matches at an altitude of 1500m.

Morton describes this as “three different performance environments,” but it might help the team’s preparations further down the line. He explains: “Training in Tennessee may actually provide a performance benefit given that there is some research to suggest that training in hot conditions can induce physiological adaptations that may improve physical performance in cooler conditions.”

To help the players stay fresh in the intense heat the Spanish performance staff have introduced cooling vests; fitted garments packed with frozen gel to cool the wearer down instantly. Videos of the Spain team wearing the vest have been shared widely online. They are often worn before exercise - known as pre-cooling - to ensure that players start with a lower core temperature before beginning a workout or game.

Soccer catches up on sport nutrition

The days of poor nutrition and post-game beers are long gone and elite-level nutrition teams now ensure that players get exactly what they need into their system. Morton describes nutrition as the main area of sport science development over the last decade, with teams now bringing “multiple nutritionists and performance chefs” to the World Cup.

“Within this World Cup, fueling, re-fueling and hydration will be critical performance priorities that all teams will be laser-focused on,” Morton explains.

A big development is recent years is the growth of player-specific fueling and hydration, designed to satisfy each individual’s needs. Bespoke fueling products can be created for each player, with a specific combination of carbohydrate, fluid, sodium and electrolytes to replace what is depleted during exercise.

Morton says: “The starting point is the player, not the position alone. Practitioners consider body mass, their role in the team, expected minutes, match demands, individual sweat rate, sodium losses, gut tolerance, food preferences and previous responses in training etc. A winger or full-back may have different running demands from a center-back, but two players in the same position can also still have different needs and performance plans.”

“However, all of this work should be done months in advance, because you need to test products in training and friendly matches, not try them for the first time when it really matters.”

Switching off when it matters

There are few situations that are less conducive to a good night’s sleep than playing at a World Cup. Most players travelling to the tournament will have had to adapt to a significant time zone shift, before embarking on an incredibly intense spell of career-defining games, on the biggest stage, in an unfamiliar environment.

All that makes it difficult to get a solid eight hours every night. But with intense physical demands, sleep plays a crucial role in recovery and teams go to extreme lengths to make players as comfortable as possible. Morton describes sleep as “one of the biggest factors to influence performance, both physically and mentally,” with teams using “sleep specialists” to optimize player sleep protocol.

“This can be as simple as having a set routine, managing both bright and blue light exposure, caffeine intake, reducing time on devices, controlling room temperature and using black-out blinds; all the way to ensuring that each hotel is fitted with players’ customized mattresses and pillows.”

That attention to detail may sound excessive but it forms a crucial part of the World Cup preparations. Players will have trained their entire lives to reach this level and teams will spend years working towards this summer’s games. The pressure on players’ bodies will be even higher this year, with an expanded tournament played across three countries. Preparing, fueling and recovering will have a real impact on performance, and could even help to decide which team ends the 2026 World Cup in triumph.

“In my experiences, teams who win are the teams who can be bothered to do all the things that no one else can be bothered to do,” Morton says. “Never has this been more true in the case of performance nutrition, it is one of the performance fundamentals that you just have to get right day in and day out. And if you don’t, then you are literally leaving performance on the table.”

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