“Every ingredient can be the difference. It’s not just food – it’s performance on a plate.”
Diogo Prego doesn’t need to spell it out. As private chef to a Manchester City first-teamer – a player whose form can tilt an entire season – the stakes are understood without saying. Mistakes aren’t inconvenient here. They’re catastrophic.
Prego sets the tone from the first exchange: passion is power, and he feels it every single day.
It wasn’t always this way. Raised in Portugal, where food is serious business, Prego trained in Lisbon and had his own restaurant open by 23. The hours were brutal. “I was working 12 to 14 hours a day,” he recalls. “After a few years, I was completely drained.” He stepped back – not from cooking, but from the version of it that was grinding him down.
“I realised that stopping wasn’t an option for me,” he says. “I needed to go back to the kitchen. Just not as a regular chef.”
Private cheffing offered something the restaurant world couldn’t – focus. A direct line between what he prepared and what it produced. A connection through Benfica brought an introduction to a Manchester City player. A brief trial followed, and that was that. The stakes, from that moment, were entirely different.
“At the highest level, it’s wild,” he tells MOJEH MEN. “You’re feeding men whose bodies are finely calibrated instruments. Every ingredient is a decision.”
Modern elite football is less sport than engineering. Training, sleep, recovery and nutrition all operate as a single system – and Prego is responsible for one critical part of that machine. Every Sunday the player sends over his schedule for the week – training sessions, match days, rest days – and Prego builds around it. Everything, down to brunch, is intentional. The smoothie uses mango and papaya rather than cheaper, processed alternatives because, as Prego puts it, the cleaner the input, the better the output.
That philosophy runs through everything he makes. Pasta is rolled by hand. Granola is baked and portioned in advance. Protein bars are made in-house, every gram accounted for. “I try to make everything from scratch,” he says. “Buy as little as possible from the supermarket.” And underpinning all of it is bone broth – chicken, fish, beef, simmered for hours until dense with collagen, amino acids and minerals. “It’s far healthier to cook with that than just water,” he says. It’s the base note of almost every meal, doing work the player will feel on the pitch.
Before a match, the brief tightens further. “Energy has to hit fast,” he explains. “Even vegetables – as healthy as they are – slow everything down. Fibre delays digestion. Carbohydrates are the fuel, so they take priority. Vegetables get cut in the hours before kick-off.” It’s not fussiness. It’s physiology. A mistimed meal – too heavy, too fibrous – can blunt speed, stamina or sharpness at the worst possible moment.
After the final whistle, the mission shifts entirely. “Simple meals, no compromises,” he says. “Chicken or beef with pasta or rice. Sometimes an omelette. The body needs to refuel and rebuild – so that’s the goal. Taste is secondary.” He pauses. “But it still has to hit.”
The job, though, extends well beyond the kitchen. “You’re always there,” Prego says. “You need to read your client, anticipate how they feel, and adjust. Proximity changes the game.” Trust, he says, isn’t assumed at this level – it’s built over time, meal by meal, week by week. “Anyone can cook. But trust? That’s earned.” He laughs. “I spend more time with him than with my wife.”
When the season ends, Prego returns to Portugal to run Golden Chefs, his own company. Bigger tables, different clients, new settings – but the same underlying ethos. Every choice carries consequence. Every detail is calculated.
On building a career in the current climate, he is blunt. “If you are not online, you don’t exist.” Skill alone is no longer enough – reputation spreads fast and opportunities move through networks. His advice to anyone coming up is just as direct: “Keep pushing hard. Meet people. Connections are very important.” No fluff. No shortcuts. Progress is built step by step, through repetition – a principle that holds in kitchens and on football pitches alike.
“I’m one of the few people who can honestly say I love what I do,” he says. That’s not modesty – it’s the engine behind everything. By matchday, nothing is left to chance. The energy is primed, the recovery accounted for, the body conditioned to perform without hesitation. The crowd sees the tackles and the sprints. Prego sees the hours of preparation that made them possible.
