DOHA, Qatar
— Yerba mate is not, to be fair, for everyone.
A strong
and often bitter herbal infusion brewed hot or cold from the leaves of a plant
native to South America, yerba mate is popular in Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil and
Argentina. Some of the best soccer players in the world have spread it around
the world through their club teams. To avoid logistical and supply challenges, they
came prepared. Brazil’s national team, which has a few mate drinkers, brought
12 kg of it to Qatar, a team official said. Uruguay’s squad packed about
240 kg. But Argentina topped them all. To ensure the steady supply of a
drink they consider essential, Argentina’s team brought 500 kg of yerba
mate to Qatar.
“It has
caffeine,” Argentine midfielder Alexis Mac Allister said in Spanish. “But I
drink it more than anything to bring us together.”
A spokesman
for Argentina’s national team, Nicolás Novello, said the team brought different
types to suit everyone’s taste: yerba mate with stems (a milder taste), without
stems (a stronger, more bitter taste) and with herbs (for other flavors). Observers
said nearly everyone, including the team’s star, Lionel Messi, was drinking it;
the team’s devotion to the drink was clear every time it unloaded its team bus,
and after matches, a handful of players would carry out the traditional mate
essentials: a cup made of a hollow gourd, its accompanying straw and a thermos
of hot water.
“When I played in Argentina, a nutritionist
used to say mate hydrates you,” said Sebastián Driussi, a midfielder for Austin
F.C. in Major League Soccer. Driussi represented Argentina at the youth level
internationally and spent three years with the popular Argentine club River
Plate. “I don’t know, but it’s like water for us. Before a game, in the locker
room, everyone is drinking it all the time. There is no schedule or bad time to
have mate. In Argentina we say that mate makes friendships.”
The
influence, and the example, of mate-drinking players from South America like
Messi, Uruguay’s Luis Suárez and Brazil’s Neymar — who used to be club
teammates at Barcelona — have led other players to adopt the practice.
French
player Antoine Griezmann took up the habit after befriending the Uruguayan
players Cristian Rodríguez and José María Giménez when they were teammates at
Atlético Madrid. Griezmann now drinks it daily. Another French star, Paul
Pogba, said in 2018 that he got hooked on mate after one of his Manchester
United teammates at the time — Marcos Rojo, an Argentine — gave him some of his
own infusion.
Not every
player, though, is a fan of the taste that some have called too bitter, too
herbaceous, too earthy. (Experts advised beginners to start with a sweet mate.)
Walker Zimmerman, a defender on the United States team that was eliminated from
the World Cup in the round of 16, said two of his Argentine teammates at F.C.
Dallas years ago — Maximiliano Urruti and Mauro Díaz — introduced him to mate,
but he admitted, “I don’t think I’d ever get into it on my own.”
Lisandro
López, a former Argentina defender, played in Portugal. “A lot of the time —
and I lived in Lisbon for four years — I went to a plaza to drink mate and
people looked at me weird, like you’re doing drugs or something,” López said.
Luis
Hernández, the former Mexican striker, spent a season at Boca Juniors in
Argentina. While everyone else on the team drank mate, he was the only one who
didn’t. “I prefer a good coffee,” Hernández said, adding later with a smile,
“They say it helps them? But mate doesn’t help you score goals.”
