Daily Routine of Sébastien Haller

Sébastien Haller’s story is, before it is anything else about football, a story about surviving. In July 2022 — newly signed by Borussia Dortmund for €31 million, on the verge of what should have been the peak chapter of a career built through Auxerre, Utrecht, Eintracht Frankfurt, West Ham, and Ajax — he was diagnosed with a testicular tumour. The diagnosis came during pre-season medical tests. He began treatment immediately. He returned to professional football seven months later and went on to win the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations with Ivory Coast, scoring the crucial goal that sent the Éléphants to the final of a tournament they subsequently won.

Born in Rouen, France, to Ivorian parents, Haller is another entry in this series’ profound diaspora identity thread: a player born in Europe to African parents, shaped by European football’s systems, choosing the country of his family’s heritage. He chose the Ivory Coast — where he has become one of the most beloved players of the current generation — and his AFCON winner’s medal is the proudest achievement of a career that has already included surviving something that had nothing to do with football.

Now at Utrecht — the Dutch club where his European journey first began, a return that carries the specific emotional weight of coming home to the place where professional possibility first revealed itself — Haller plays with the specific gratitude of someone who knows what it means to have been uncertain of whether he would play again. Owaves researched his lifestyle from 7 interviews, social media content, club and federation media, and verified reporting to build a composite day.

“When I came back after the illness, everything was different. I don’t play football the same way anymore — I play with more gratitude, more joy. When you know what it is to face something like that, the rest becomes very clear.” — Sébastien Haller (FIF official media, 2023)

Sébastien Haller’s Daily Routine

• 7:30 AM — Wake up, hydration, light movement (🧘 Relax)
• 8:00 AM — Breakfast: Ivorian-French morning — baguette, eggs, fresh tropical fruit, attiéké (sometimes), café (🥗 Eat)
• 9:00 AM — Drive to FC Utrecht’s Sportcomplex De Galgenwaard training facility (🌊 Flow)
• 9:30 AM — Individual pre-activation: striker movement patterns, finishing warm-up (🏃 Move)
• 9:45 AM — Full team training: attacking shape, pressing, set pieces (💼 Work)
• 11:45 AM — Extra individual finishing work: movement sequences, aerial work (🏃 Move)
• 12:30 PM — Post-training recovery: physiotherapy, stretching, ice treatment (🧘 Relax)
• 1:15 PM — Lunch: high-protein meal, complex carbs, salad (🥗 Eat)
• 2:15 PM — Video analysis: own positioning, opposition defensive patterns (💼 Work)
• ~3:15 PM — Afternoon rest / nap (60–90 minutes) [estimated] (😴 Sleep)
• ~4:45 PM — Light gym: core, lower body, rehabilitation maintenance (🏃 Move)
• 5:45 PM — Family time and personal downtime (🎮 Play)
• 7:30 PM — Dinner: Ivorian home cooking — attiéké, aloco, grilled fish or chicken (🥗 Eat)
• 8:30 PM — Quality time with wife and children (❤️ Love)
• 10:00 PM — Wind-down: light stretching, reading, quiet family time (🧘 Relax)
• 10:45 PM — Pre-sleep routine: no screens (🧘 Relax)
• 11:15 PM — Lights out (😴 Sleep)

How Sébastien Haller Starts the Day

Sébastien Haller’s mornings carry a quality of deliberate presence that is specific to people who have been confronted with the fragility of the ordinary. The 7:30 AM wake — consistent with his Sunflower chronotype — is followed by a breakfast that is both Ivorian and French in the specific way that describes his entire background: baguette from French food culture, fresh tropical fruit from Ivory Coast’s extraordinary agricultural abundance, eggs for protein, and occasionally attiéké — the fermented cassava couscous that is Ivory Coast’s most beloved daily food — when he has prepared it from the previous evening.

Attiéké deserves the same kind of specific nutritional and cultural attention that this series has applied to kimchi, pikliz, kajmak, and the other fermented foods documented across 78 players. Made from cassava that has been fermented, dried, and processed into a light, grain-like texture, attiéké provides complex carbohydrates with the gut-health benefits of fermentation — a probiotic dimension that the most health-conscious functional foods companies are attempting to replicate in supplement form, available in every Ivorian market at a fraction of the cost. Simon Adingra (also Ivorian, profiled earlier in this series) eats attiéké at his own morning table — creating an Ivorian breakfast parallel that connects two Ivory Coast players at different European clubs through the same fermented morning food.

“Attiéké and grilled fish — when I eat this I am in Abidjan. I am home. I prepare it when I can. Utrecht is not Abidjan, but I make my home here the same way I make it wherever I am — with the food, with the family, with the things that matter.” — Sébastien Haller (FIF official media, 2024)

The drive to Utrecht’s training facility near the Galgenwaard stadium — the same complex adjacent to the ground where Haller first made his European name as a young professional — takes approximately 15 minutes from his Utrecht residence. The return to Utrecht is not merely geographical. It is the completion of a loop whose significance goes beyond the football.

Training at Utrecht: Coming Home

Sébastien Haller trains at FC Utrecht’s training complex — the facility where his first European professional chapter was written, now serving as the arena where his post-illness career has found its most comfortable and most emotionally resonant professional context. Utrecht’s Eredivisie environment — competitive, technically demanding, and supportive of exactly the kind of physical, direct centre-forward that Haller has always been — provides the daily professional context that his recovery and his career stage require.

His training profile reflects the complete striker: the physicality that wins aerial battles and holds up the ball under defensive pressure, the technical quality that opens up in tight spaces, and the finishing instinct that has scored goals at every level of European football he has competed in. Post-illness, his training approach has a deliberate element of load management that was not always present before the cancer diagnosis — the sports science awareness of what his body has been through, applied to the daily decisions about training intensity.

“I train with joy now. Before, I think I sometimes took training for granted — it was just what you did. Now I appreciate every session. That sounds like a cliché but for me it is completely true.” — Sébastien Haller (Utrecht FC official media, 2024)

Ivorian Cuisine: The Abidjan Table

Ivorian cuisine — documented for Simon Adingra earlier in this series — gets its second treatment here through Haller’s specific Rouen-raised, Ivorian-hearted food identity. Attiéké is the daily carbohydrate constant: fermented cassava couscous, light and grain-like, served alongside grilled fish (poisson braisé), chicken, or plantain. Aloco — the fried sweet plantain caramelised with oil and spices — appears alongside proteins as the sweet carbohydrate dimension of Ivorian cooking. Sauce graine (palm nut sauce with chicken or fish) provides the rich, flavourful stew dimension that Ivorian cooking deploys with the same confidence that West African cuisines broadly bring to their most celebrated preparations.

The Ivorian food connection across this series is now the most complete regional food thread in Africa: Adingra and Haller represent two different professional contexts, two different career stages, and two different cities — but the same Ivorian table, the same attiéké, the same fermented cassava daily food that connects their mornings across the English Channel and the North Sea.

The Cancer, the Return, the AFCON

No account of Sébastien Haller’s daily life is complete without acknowledging the specific context through which every ordinary professional day is now experienced. The testicular tumour diagnosis in July 2022, the chemotherapy and treatment that followed, the return to Dortmund’s first team in January 2023, the AFCON winner’s medal with Ivory Coast in February 2024 — this sequence of events is not merely biographical context. It is the frame through which Haller approaches every morning, every training session, every match.

The AFCON victory was one of African football’s most celebrated recent moments: Ivory Coast, hosting the tournament on home soil, coming back from seemingly impossible positions in the knockout stages, and winning the final against Nigeria in Abidjan. Haller’s contribution — goals across the tournament including in the crucial knockout rounds — was delivered by a player who had been uncertain, 18 months earlier, whether he would compete at this level again.

His family — his wife and children, who were with him through the illness and the recovery — are the most important presences in his daily life. The family dinner, the quality evening time, the deliberate protection of the home environment as a space of warmth and normalcy: these are not incidental to his professional performance. They are what the professional performance is for.

What Haller’s Routine Tells Us About the Body Clock

Sébastien Haller’s schedule aligns with the Sunflower chronotype — a 7:30 AM wake, consistent sleep timing, and Utrecht’s morning training window. He is the thirty-sixth Sunflower in this series.

The attiéké fermentation thread connects him to the series’ most geographically distributed food-science finding: fermented traditional foods at elite athletes’ daily tables, spanning Japan (miso), Korea (kimchi), Iran (labneh), Bosnia (kajmak), Senegal (café Touba notes), Haiti (pikliz), and now Ivory Coast — twice, through Adingra and Haller — with attiéké. The global distribution of probiotic traditional foods across 78 elite athletes is not statistically random. It is the expression of a universal human wisdom that sports science is only now beginning to document formally.

Want to discover your chronotype? Take the Owaves Chronotype Quiz.

Plan Your Day Like Sébastien Haller with Owaves: My BodyClock

📲 Download Owaves: My BodyClock free on iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch.

If you liked this article, you’ll also love:

• Daily Routine of Erling Haaland
• Daily Routine of Arda Güler
• Daily Routine of Jude Bellingham

Owaves: The World’s First Wellness Planner, Powered by Your Body Clock

Owaves is the world’s first wellness planner powered by circadian rhythm science — the same breakthrough research that won the Nobel Prize in 2017. Designed by physicians and built with award-winning developers, Owaves helps you plan your day in alignment with your biology so you can optimize your sleep, energy, focus, and recovery.

Download the app for free on iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch to start planning your day with intention.

Want to go deeper?

Upgrade to BodyClock Plus, our premium feature that uses your unique chronotype to deliver personalized daily recommendations for deep sleep, exercise, and deep work. With BodyClock Plus, your calendar becomes a powerful tool for peak performance and total wellbeing — tailored just for you.

• iOS: Download Owaves free today
• Android users: Join the waitlist here

Connect with us on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, X, and Facebook

Feedback? We’d love to hear from you: feedback@owaves.com.