Udinese Calcio and the Universidad Europea join forces through the “Performance, Nutrition and Sustainability” Class | OneFootball

Madrid, February 4th, 2026 – Udinese Calcio and the Universidad Europea signed, this Wednesday, the creation of a Class in “Performance, Nutrition and Sustainability,” a strategic alliance that brings together the academic excellence in sports nutrition and performance-focused approach that characterize the Italian club.

The aim of this Class is to develop a program that uses nutrition as a key tool to optimize sports performance within a sustainable strategy and methodology.

Through this agreement, that represents a fundamental strategic step in the mission to promote the holistic development of young footballers and maximize their sporting performance, Udinese Calcio seeks to strengthen the scientific basis of its own nutritional protocols. For this reason, the club has been collaborating for several years with companies interested in improving their products through studies and research and development activities. Unifarco, KA-EX, MartinoRossi, and Crown Sport Nutrition are long-standing partners of Udinese Calcio who are keen to work alongside the club to enhance player performance by optimizing existing product lines and developing new market proposals, with an evidence-based scientific approach.

The coordination and supervision of the project will be led by Dr. Antonio Molina López, Head of the Nutrition Department at Udinese Calcio and Watford Football Club, and a university professor at the Real Madrid–Universidad Europea University School, who will serve as Director of the Class. Dr. Molina will lead the methodological approach of the project, including study design, protocol definition, data analysis, and validation, ensuring alignment between academic standards and practical application within a professional club environment.

This collaboration, like Udinese Calcio’s other projects, is based on a strong and concrete focus on sustainability, through the creation and implementation of a nutritional program that pays close attention to the origin of raw materials, the production process, distribution to athletes, and waste management, with the goal of minimizing environmental impact. These protocols will be scientifically verified and validated within the studies conducted by the Class.

“The work of this Class on Performance, Nutrition and Sustainability represents a concrete opportunity to transform everyday experience in elite football into scientific evidence: solid protocols, validated data, and innovative, sustainable nutritional solutions with a real impact on performance and recovery,” stated Dr. Antonio Molina López. “We want to turn the work we do with Udinese into a global case study, as the club is an absolute benchmark worldwide for its comprehensive approach to performance care.”

Gianluca Pizzamiglio, Marketing Director of Udinese Calcio, noted that “this collaboration with the Universidad Europea once again demonstrates how Udinese Calcio is an increasingly international club, attentive to innovation and sustainability.” “It involves a university and a university school that are global references in sports nutrition, enabling the club to become a platform for study and exchange also among researchers and students from Udine and Friuli Venezia Giulia and those from Universidad Europea in Madrid. Moreover, it confirms how the different areas of the club— in this case, the marketing/commercial department and the nutrition department—work together to increase the relevance of the Udinese Calcio brand in Italy and abroad and, above all, to support improvements in first-team sporting performance,” he concluded.

For Simone Sato, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Health and Sports at the European University, “this Class reinforces the way we understand education and research in sports sciences: by working side by side with professional clubs, bringing academic rigor onto the pitch, and generating knowledge that returns to classrooms, the scientific community, and the industry. It is also a great opportunity for our students to engage with real, high-performance and sustainability-focused projects in professional football,” she emphasized.

‘This class is an example of how we understand research at the European University: working with top-level international partners, addressing real challenges in professional sport and generating knowledge that translates into a measurable impact on players' performance and health,’ says Eva Icarán, Vice-Chancellor for Faculty and Research at the European University. ‘It is not just a matter of supporting specific projects, but of building lines of research that are sustained over time, with scientific rigour and a commitment to transfer,’ concludes the Vice-Chancellor.