Impaired sleep and recovery after night matchesin elite football players

Despite the perceived importance of sleep for elite footballers, descriptions of the duration and qualityof sleep, especially following match play, are limited. Moreover, recovery responses following sleep lossremain unclear. Accordingly, the present study examined the subjective sleep and recovery responsesof elite footballers across training days (TD) and both day and night matches (DM and NM). Sixteen topdivision European players from three clubs completed a subjective online questionnaire twice a day for21 days during the season. Subjective recall of sleep variables (duration, onset latency, time of wake/sleep, wake episode duration), a range of perceptual variables related to recovery, mood, performanceand internal training loads and non-exercise stressors were collected. Players reported significantlyreduced sleep durations for NM compared to DM (?157 min) and TD (?181 min). In addition, sleeprestfulness (SR; arbitrary scale 1 = very restful, 5 = not at all restful) and perceived recovery (PR; acuterecovery and stress scale 0 = not recovered at all, 6 = fully recovered) were significantly poorerfollowing NM than both TD (SR: +2.0, PR: ?2.6), and DM (SR: +1.5; PR: ?1.5). These results suggestthat reduced sleep quantity and quality and reduced PR are mainly evident following NM in eliteplayers.8 Halama