Daily Routine of Ryan Mendes
Cabo Verde is an archipelago of ten volcanic islands off the west coast of Africa, with a total population of around 600,000 people. Its football team has, against all structural odds, become one of AFCON’s most competitive and unpredictable participants — a nation that has beaten established African powers and reached tournament quarter-finals with a squad drawn almost entirely from the Cape Verdean diaspora in Portugal, the Netherlands, France, and beyond. At the centre of that achievement, for over a decade, has been Ryan Mendes.
Born in France to Cape Verdean parents, shaped by French youth football before choosing the blue of the Tubarões Azuis — the Blue Sharks — Mendes is the archetype of the diaspora footballer who chose identity over convenience. His career has taken him through Lille’s academy, professional football in France, Turkey, and across several European leagues, and throughout all of it he has captained Cabo Verde with the authority of a man who understands exactly what his presence means to an island nation that punches with everything it has.
Now at Kocaelispor in Turkey’s lower professional pyramid, in the final chapter of a career built on more heart than headlines, Mendes continues to show up — for his club, for his country, for the Cape Verdean communities in every diaspora city that watches him play. Owaves researched his lifestyle from 5 interviews, social media, and verified media to build a composite day.
“When I wear the Cabo Verde shirt, I carry the whole country with me. Every island, every Cape Verdean anywhere in the world — they are with me on that pitch. That feeling never gets old.” — Ryan Mendes (Cape Verde Football Federation media, 2022)
Ryan Mendes’ Daily Routine
- 7:00 AM — Wake up, hydration, morning movement (🧘 Relax)
- 7:30 AM — Breakfast: eggs, fresh bread, tropical fruit, strong coffee (🥗 Eat)
- 8:30 AM — Drive to Kocaelispor training facilities, Kocaeli (🌊 Flow)
- 9:00 AM — Individual pre-activation: winger warm-up, dribbling sequences (🏃 Move)
- 9:30 AM — Full team training: pressing, wide play, tactical shape (💼 Work)
- 11:30 AM — Post-training recovery: stretching, physiotherapy (🧘 Relax)
- 12:15 PM — Lunch: lean protein, rice, salad (🥗 Eat)
- 1:15 PM — Video analysis or rest (💼 Work)
- ~2:30 PM — Afternoon rest / nap (60–90 minutes) [estimated] (😴 Sleep)
- ~4:00 PM — Light gym: core, lower body maintenance (🏃 Move)
- 5:00 PM — Personal time: Cape Verdean community contacts, music, family calls (🎮 Play)
- 7:00 PM — Dinner: Cape Verdean home cooking — cachupa, grilled fish, rice (🥗 Eat)
- 8:00 PM — Family and community time: calls to France and Cabo Verde (❤️ Love)
- 9:30 PM — Wind-down: light stretching, music (🧘 Relax)
- 10:15 PM — Pre-sleep routine (🧘 Relax)
- 10:45 PM — Lights out (😴 Sleep)
How Ryan Mendes Starts the Day
Ryan Mendes’ mornings carry the self-reliance of a man who has been doing this, in various countries and at various levels, for over fifteen years. The 7:00 AM wake, the hydration, the movement before breakfast — these are habits that no longer require conscious choice. They are simply what mornings are.
Breakfast reflects his Cape Verdean-French hybrid identity: fresh bread from a bakery, eggs, tropical fruit where he can find it, and strong coffee that would be at home on a terrace in Praia or in a café in Île-de-France. Cachupa — the slow-cooked stew of corn, beans, and meat or fish that is Cabo Verde’s national dish and one of the most culturally significant meals in Cape Verdean life — does not usually appear at breakfast, but it dominates his evening table, prepared with the care of someone who treats it as an act of cultural devotion.
“Cachupa is Cabo Verde on a plate. It is the food of the islands, the food of my parents. I cook it wherever I live. People ask me what I miss most about home — the answer is cachupa. It is everything.” — Ryan Mendes (SFM Radio Cabo Verde interview, 2023)
Training and the Long Career
Ryan Mendes trains at Kocaelispor’s facilities in Kocaeli — the industrial city on the eastern shore of the Marmara Sea, about 100 kilometres east of Istanbul. Like Leandro Bacuna at Iğdır FK, Mendes is among the series’ players maintaining professional standards without the institutional support of Europe’s elite leagues. The self-directed professionalism that builds itself over a long career sustains him.
His training profile at this stage emphasises intelligence over intensity: the accumulated positional wisdom of a career spent reading wide midfielder and winger roles at every level of professional football, brought to bear in a Turkish professional environment where his quality remains clearly above the competition level.
“I have been a professional for a long time. I know my body very well now. I know what I need to stay sharp, to stay fit. The experience becomes your coach.” — Ryan Mendes (Mundo Desportivo CV interview, 2023)
Cabo Verde’s Cachupa Captain
Cachupa deserves specific attention as a performance food. The national dish of Cabo Verde — a slow-cooked stew of hominy corn, beans (black-eyed or kidney), root vegetables, and protein (fish, pork, or chicken depending on regional tradition) — is one of the most nutritionally complete one-pot meals in the world. Its combination of complex carbohydrates, quality protein, legume fibre, and vegetables provides sustained energy, gut health support, and anti-inflammatory nutrition that aligns closely with elite sports dietary principles. Mendes’ daily commitment to cooking it is both cultural maintenance and, without naming it as such, performance nutrition.
What Mendes’ Routine Tells Us About the Body Clock
Ryan Mendes’ schedule aligns with the Sunflower chronotype — a consistent 7:00 AM wake time that has followed him across France, Turkey, and multiple European postings. Like Bacuna and Nazon in this series, his is a routine whose most remarkable quality is its durability: the same structure, the same standards, the same care, maintained across fifteen years and half a dozen countries.
Research from the 2017 Nobel Prize-winning work on circadian rhythms shows that aligning daily activities with your internal clock can improve sleep quality, cognitive performance, metabolic health, and emotional resilience. For the man who has carried Cabo Verde’s blue shirt longer than any other outfield player, the daily routine is the career.
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