‘It’s bordering on exploitation’: Roberts warns professional football is adopting pseudoscience
Dr Claire-Marie Roberts said professional football is being duped by pseudoscience after recounting a sales call she received while working at Coventry City, an episode she described on 22 September. She told how suppliers pitch devices and supplements such as what was offered to her as "oxygen in a can" and warned the trend was "bordering on exploitation".
Roberts, who has worked for decades in elite athlete performance and professional football, described receiving up to 50 LinkedIn messages a week from people promoting devices, supplements or technologies that promised "miraculous gains". She spent nine years at the Premier League and two at Coventry, where she says she played a key role in their promotion as Championship champions, before joining the Formula One team McLaren as director of human performance in the summer. Her experience across sports underpins her criticism of how clubs adopt new practices without sufficient evidence.
She recounted the Coventry call in detail: after the caller asked whether she knew "how much oxygen was in the atmosphere" and she replied "It is only 21%," the caller added: "So what we've done is put oxygen in a can and we think you might want to use it." Roberts said she declined the offer. The anecdote illustrates, she argues, how vendors present scientifically dubious products to performance staff.
Roberts singled out cryotherapy chambers, which she described as "a common feature at elite training grounds," and said ice baths are often used as a fallback. She noted a widely circulated image of Harry Kane standing in a wheelie bin of ice after a Bayern Munich match at last year's Club World Cup as an example of players embracing such practices. "Most clubs have got cryotherapy chambers – most people cannot articulate to you why they use them, because there's no evidence for them apart from a very slim piece of work that says it might help prevent dementia," she said, adding: "There's very sketchy evidence on cryotherapy."
She warned some modalities could even hinder progress, citing "a recent suggestion that cryotherapy might blunt muscular adaptation," and questioned timing and purpose: "When are you using it and why are you using it? If you're using it for recovery, sleep and nutrition are your best recovery modalities. No amount of putting anybody in a whole-body cryotherapy chamber is going to help them recover more if those two things aren't taken care of."
On supplements, Roberts described the industry as multibillion-pound and urged that use be targeted to measurable deficiencies rather than blanket consumption. She stated that beyond vitamin D and vitamin C people should take supplements only when needed and said: "You’ve got people popping pills not really asking what they’re for. It should always be needs-based. If you don’t eat fish and fish oil is important to you, you might supplement it. It should all be based on need." She added: "Your athletic performance and recovery is based on sleep quality and nutritional quality and amounts. No amount of supplementation will improve a bad diet, but people think it will. We don’t do enough of the basics and think we can shortcut and hack everything."
Roberts said clubs often copy practices used by high-profile teams without critical appraisal, arguing: "People passively suck these things up. Because England or Manchester City or Chelsea who have all the resources under the sun have got this, there's a misappropriation of confidence and understanding of the scientific basis or evidence. It's powerful in driving behaviour, but it's driving the wrong behaviour." She described managerial and staff inertia where long‑established routines persist despite a lack of scientific support.
Turning to common on-field aids, Roberts dismissed kinesiology tape as unsupported by evidence: "There’s no evidence kinesiology tape has any impact on injury prevention or performance-related outcomes. It gives you a bit of proprioception – maybe you feel like someone has done something – but in any environment I’ve worked in you’d never see anyone wearing k-tape. It’s a big white elephant." She contrasted that with strapping, saying: "If an athlete has dislocated their shoulder, you should strap it – strapping is different. It provides an element of external support that can provide minimal protection to the joint and reminds the person they’ve got a problem. It’s a risk-mitigation strategy. It’s not hugely successful, but you’d do it rather than not do it. K-tape is a placebo."
A former swimmer who missed the 1996 Atlanta Olympics owing to injury, Roberts said football was particularly vulnerable to such practices because of the stakes involved: "Football is more susceptible to it than any other sport I’ve experienced first-hand. I think because the stakes are higher." Her cross-sport background informs her view about the prevalence of poor decision‑making in football performance.
Roberts urged a stronger scientific foundation in football, calling for qualified staff to scrutinise commercial claims and for clubs to prioritise fundamentals. "We think we can accelerate to an outcome without putting the hard yards in – the basic things: diet and sleep and the quality of your training," she said, adding: "Football in general is very anti-intellectual and it has been for a long time. There are a few clubs that do it well, but the majority don’t. The game is definitely anti-science. There’s a reason for that. There isn’t a critical mass of people that are applying critical thought to situations."
