Acccusations by former Man Utd legend Gary Neville that Italian sides he played against were not 'clean', have ignited a new debate on doping in the English game.
Whilst I generally think in terms of no smoke without fire, I often wonder if there is a different risk reward equation in football due to the massive “basic” salaries available.
Unlike many other sports, it not a case of win or nothing. An average premier league footballer, who never wins anything, is going to earn on a level with (or above) some of the absolute best medal winning in other sports.
Injury as with Pogba, is an area where you may see a level of desperation… but it’s not competition based.. Once you have a contract.. being injured is not necessarily the financial issue it is elsewhere. Even losing a year or two if you have a 5 year deal.
It hard to believe any athlete would take a supplement without checking or their wife’s fat burning pills..
But whilst the money on offer in football is high enough to believe it would encourage doping… the wealth available without winning would seem to be in contrast to most other athletes
Thanks for your comments! I think always as you go higher up in the medals table, or in the case of football to the best players in the world, the chances of doping amongst the elite is always going to be quite similar across most major sports and I see football as no different. Quite simply the drugs just work too well.
But I agree as you go down a level to squad players at A and B-level clubs it would make sense that there is less competition, and maybe less doping, than there is in a sport like tennis. In tennis barely 100 players make top money in the sport whereas in football it is thousands. But I guess one could argue the other way, that there would be more of a doping problem because there is so much more money on offer as a whole.
Just to look at some facts, at the 2011 World Athletics Championships between 30 and 45% of athletes admitted to doping in the last 12 months (self confession in an anonymous survey). There isn't a similar study in football, but the UEFA study in the article mentions 7.7% of players had elevated testosterone levels. Two different types of survey but both damning. I'll write an article on the prevalence of doping in sport in the coming months.
So whilst I agree why all elite sports should be the same.. I also think you have to look at why they are different.
The athlete Kerr is in the press complaining an indoor gold is worth $40k.. winning Wimbledon is £2.35m
The average premier league salary is said to be £60k per week. That’s £3.12m a year.
Most of The very Top rugby players make less than £500k a year.
And athetes it’s all about competitions every 2 years… cyclists.. it’s all about 4 races a year, realistically maybe 2 they target.
And maybe the top 5, 10 in any of the sports who win all the time make money comparable to the top what 500,1000 footballers make for just turning up to training.
Let’s say Jordan Henderson.. a player who is under rated technically, but whose game was really built of athleticism. His legs “are gone”… but he can drop down to lower leagues and still make £700k a week in Saudi, or £125k a week in the Netherlands.
I can’t think of any other sport where you can go to another league and make that much as semi-retirement..
So I do wonder if maybe “making it” in football is reaching the top level. If the incentive to cheat is if you are just short of that level.. and the incentive to stay at that top level may overwhelm the incentive to cheat.
Which would lead to a lower level of people taking PED’s at the highest level.
Consider.. Liverpool have enforced a £50k a year salary max for academy kids because anymore was affecting their motivation…
Well where’s the motivation to cheat and take peds if they haven’t got the motivation to push on…
Whilst I think there is definitely more doping then we see, and I find it hugely suspicious there isn’t more blood tests etc.
I do wonder if the financial rewards just for being a top level footballers may make a difference compared to other sports…
Thanks, interesting argument. I would say though that doping is also done from a position of strength. It is not always an ageing athlete or an injured athlete who makes the decision to do so.
There are also different levels of doping. IVs to recover from matches (undetectable) and a full PED cocktail are both doping.
IVs were very prevalent in football, especially Germany and Italy, before every match.
They are part of a culture of the game. Hard to eliminate a culture when anti-doping is so lax in football. I imagine many footballers don’t even see it as doping because it is, or rather has been, so ingrained in the game. And if they don’t see it as doping then there is no moral hazard argument as to why there would be less doping in football. In 2017, there was a study in Spanish football - 95% of players admitted they didn’t know what WADA was.
So even if there is indeed less hardcore doping, milder forms of doping you’d imagine are still very prevalent.
Ahh indeed… a lot of doping is also through a failure to make it clean though… I think specifically if you look at the (apparent) stories of US postal and then team sky.. the failure and then sudden jumps, indeed the timeline you put together for team sky, would seem to meet that pattern.
IV’s and prevalent culture are an interesting one.. as I understand it.. they weren’t doping, and aren’t necessarily doping now (depending on what is in them), except it becomes much easier to police if you go for a blanket no-needles policy.. genuinely not sure if that is standard wada code now or just cycling.
I’m not trying to defend football, but I also think if you look at the iterative leaps to success of teams and team sports, you also have to look at where they are coming from.
In the early 2000 these guys were chugging beers 5 nights a week and munching fry-ups before games.
Even after Clive Woodward came over, fairly basic sports science ideas which were inherent in many professional sports.. nutrition, data analysis, physical conditioning, psychology.. these were laughed at in football.
There were big leaps to be made legitimately.. before getting to a point of needing to make marginal gains.
It’s no surprise that Woodward went from pro rugby to elite athletic with the olympics, but didn’t fit in football. The world’s richest sport wasn’t ready for elite sports ideas.
Right now.. clubs are just starting to consider having set piece experts.. football is bizarrely about 20years behind other pro sports.
So if you compare that to really any other sports, I think there is a significant difference there, significant gains to be made by going pro.. and quite possibly not an inherent culture of needing doping to make that extra marginal gain because gains could be made just by becoming genuine elite athletes.
So I think there could be a doping culture that developed in certain teams, such as Juve, at certain times.. but I do see obvious reason for difference.
That said… the lack of sufficient testing in a sport which could afford to bring in its own bloody Covid labs is absolutely unforgivable really and doesn’t make much sense,
So in most sports, the concern about gambling is about the integrity of the sport. Spot fixing.. due to athletes seeking to make money. Potentially being blackmailed etc
Now in elite football, integrity is obvious a major concern, but the major concern, cause of gambling is elite footballers having too much time and money.
Now integrity does potentially come into it if the footballers got into too much debt…
But the big cases recently aren’t about spot fixing.. it really does seem to be about rich bored athletes losing control and breaking the rules..
The money situation does change a huge amount, it’s not as simple as more financial reward = more incentive to cheat..
Do you want to come on to Broken Oars Podcast and have a chat about this? And anything else
Thanks Llewelyn. I’ll be in contact by email!
brokenoarspodcast@gmail.com
Whilst I generally think in terms of no smoke without fire, I often wonder if there is a different risk reward equation in football due to the massive “basic” salaries available.
Unlike many other sports, it not a case of win or nothing. An average premier league footballer, who never wins anything, is going to earn on a level with (or above) some of the absolute best medal winning in other sports.
Injury as with Pogba, is an area where you may see a level of desperation… but it’s not competition based.. Once you have a contract.. being injured is not necessarily the financial issue it is elsewhere. Even losing a year or two if you have a 5 year deal.
It hard to believe any athlete would take a supplement without checking or their wife’s fat burning pills..
But whilst the money on offer in football is high enough to believe it would encourage doping… the wealth available without winning would seem to be in contrast to most other athletes
Thanks for your comments! I think always as you go higher up in the medals table, or in the case of football to the best players in the world, the chances of doping amongst the elite is always going to be quite similar across most major sports and I see football as no different. Quite simply the drugs just work too well.
But I agree as you go down a level to squad players at A and B-level clubs it would make sense that there is less competition, and maybe less doping, than there is in a sport like tennis. In tennis barely 100 players make top money in the sport whereas in football it is thousands. But I guess one could argue the other way, that there would be more of a doping problem because there is so much more money on offer as a whole.
Just to look at some facts, at the 2011 World Athletics Championships between 30 and 45% of athletes admitted to doping in the last 12 months (self confession in an anonymous survey). There isn't a similar study in football, but the UEFA study in the article mentions 7.7% of players had elevated testosterone levels. Two different types of survey but both damning. I'll write an article on the prevalence of doping in sport in the coming months.
So whilst I agree why all elite sports should be the same.. I also think you have to look at why they are different.
The athlete Kerr is in the press complaining an indoor gold is worth $40k.. winning Wimbledon is £2.35m
The average premier league salary is said to be £60k per week. That’s £3.12m a year.
Most of The very Top rugby players make less than £500k a year.
And athetes it’s all about competitions every 2 years… cyclists.. it’s all about 4 races a year, realistically maybe 2 they target.
And maybe the top 5, 10 in any of the sports who win all the time make money comparable to the top what 500,1000 footballers make for just turning up to training.
Let’s say Jordan Henderson.. a player who is under rated technically, but whose game was really built of athleticism. His legs “are gone”… but he can drop down to lower leagues and still make £700k a week in Saudi, or £125k a week in the Netherlands.
I can’t think of any other sport where you can go to another league and make that much as semi-retirement..
So I do wonder if maybe “making it” in football is reaching the top level. If the incentive to cheat is if you are just short of that level.. and the incentive to stay at that top level may overwhelm the incentive to cheat.
Which would lead to a lower level of people taking PED’s at the highest level.
Consider.. Liverpool have enforced a £50k a year salary max for academy kids because anymore was affecting their motivation…
Well where’s the motivation to cheat and take peds if they haven’t got the motivation to push on…
Whilst I think there is definitely more doping then we see, and I find it hugely suspicious there isn’t more blood tests etc.
I do wonder if the financial rewards just for being a top level footballers may make a difference compared to other sports…
Thanks, interesting argument. I would say though that doping is also done from a position of strength. It is not always an ageing athlete or an injured athlete who makes the decision to do so.
There are also different levels of doping. IVs to recover from matches (undetectable) and a full PED cocktail are both doping.
IVs were very prevalent in football, especially Germany and Italy, before every match.
They are part of a culture of the game. Hard to eliminate a culture when anti-doping is so lax in football. I imagine many footballers don’t even see it as doping because it is, or rather has been, so ingrained in the game. And if they don’t see it as doping then there is no moral hazard argument as to why there would be less doping in football. In 2017, there was a study in Spanish football - 95% of players admitted they didn’t know what WADA was.
So even if there is indeed less hardcore doping, milder forms of doping you’d imagine are still very prevalent.
Ahh indeed… a lot of doping is also through a failure to make it clean though… I think specifically if you look at the (apparent) stories of US postal and then team sky.. the failure and then sudden jumps, indeed the timeline you put together for team sky, would seem to meet that pattern.
IV’s and prevalent culture are an interesting one.. as I understand it.. they weren’t doping, and aren’t necessarily doping now (depending on what is in them), except it becomes much easier to police if you go for a blanket no-needles policy.. genuinely not sure if that is standard wada code now or just cycling.
I’m not trying to defend football, but I also think if you look at the iterative leaps to success of teams and team sports, you also have to look at where they are coming from.
In the early 2000 these guys were chugging beers 5 nights a week and munching fry-ups before games.
Even after Clive Woodward came over, fairly basic sports science ideas which were inherent in many professional sports.. nutrition, data analysis, physical conditioning, psychology.. these were laughed at in football.
There were big leaps to be made legitimately.. before getting to a point of needing to make marginal gains.
It’s no surprise that Woodward went from pro rugby to elite athletic with the olympics, but didn’t fit in football. The world’s richest sport wasn’t ready for elite sports ideas.
Right now.. clubs are just starting to consider having set piece experts.. football is bizarrely about 20years behind other pro sports.
So if you compare that to really any other sports, I think there is a significant difference there, significant gains to be made by going pro.. and quite possibly not an inherent culture of needing doping to make that extra marginal gain because gains could be made just by becoming genuine elite athletes.
So I think there could be a doping culture that developed in certain teams, such as Juve, at certain times.. but I do see obvious reason for difference.
That said… the lack of sufficient testing in a sport which could afford to bring in its own bloody Covid labs is absolutely unforgivable really and doesn’t make much sense,
Another interesting example would be gambling.,
So in most sports, the concern about gambling is about the integrity of the sport. Spot fixing.. due to athletes seeking to make money. Potentially being blackmailed etc
Now in elite football, integrity is obvious a major concern, but the major concern, cause of gambling is elite footballers having too much time and money.
Now integrity does potentially come into it if the footballers got into too much debt…
But the big cases recently aren’t about spot fixing.. it really does seem to be about rich bored athletes losing control and breaking the rules..
The money situation does change a huge amount, it’s not as simple as more financial reward = more incentive to cheat..