If you’ve noticed players chewing gum during a game, you might have wondered why.
Did they have a particularly potent chicken Kyiv for lunch? Are they using it to help ease nerves? Do they have a cunning plan to stick it to the sole of Mohamed Salah’s boot in an attempt to slow him down?
No. The most likely answer is they are chewing caffeine gum. New data has found that 97 per cent of professional football clubs in England administer caffeine to players, with gum being the second most popular way to do it, and the most popular being caffeine shots.
That 97 per cent is an arresting number when you consider that excessive caffeine was once prohibited by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) — 12 micrograms per millilitre was the threshold for urine caffeine concentration between 1987 and 2004.
Caffeine was removed from the banned list over 20 years ago but has been included in WADA’s 2025 monitoring programme to detect patterns of misuse. Despite that, caffeine has become part of a normal pre-match routine, alongside the essentials: carbohydrates, Deep Heat and a rousing speech from the manager.
But what are the benefits? How much is needed to improve performance? And what are the downsides?
In his 2016 autobiography, From Nowhere: My Story, Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy described squeezing three energy drinks and a double espresso into his matchday routine, starting with a can of Red Bull as soon as he woke up. “I won’t eat anything until I have a cheese and ham omelette with baked beans at 11.30am,” he said. “I wash that down with another Red Bull, which I also neck quickly.
“While we’re waiting and killing a bit of time, I have a double espresso. We get into the dressing room an hour and a half before kick-off, and I’ll have a third can of Red Bull straight away. But with this one I sip it all the way until we go out for the warm-up, leaving a bit to finish off when I come back in.”
It sounds excessive, but if you add up Vardy’s intake — three cans of Red Bull amounts to 240mg of caffeine; a double espresso is generally between 70mg and 120mg — it’s about 350mg, which is within the European Food Safety Authority’s recommended limit of 400mg per day for a normal person. (Caffeine gum usually contains between 50-100mg of caffeine per piece, depending on the brand, while caffeine shots contain up to 200mg, and caffeine tablets between 50mg and 100mg.)
Jamie Vardy loves a Red Bull… or three (Dan Istitene/Getty Images)
To have an impact on performance, research points to 3mg-6mg of caffeine per kilo of bodyweight being the target range. Dr Rob Naughton, a performance nutritionist who has worked with clubs and privately with international players on behalf of INTRA Performance Group, says the research also suggests “intakes of up to 9mg per kilo in certain individuals”.
Naughton points out that Vardy’s approach wouldn’t be right for everyone. “We would not recommend that someone hears of a Premier League athlete who’s banging in loads of goals doing that and following it straight away. Initially, they could try some caffeine — maybe one espresso or one caffeine gum — and try to find the sweet spot for themselves.”
Caffeine can improve performance in some athletes. One of the ways it does this is by reducing the perception of fatigue: as you exercise, your body produces a chemical called adenosine, which makes you feel tired, but caffeine blocks the adenosine receptors in your nerves, so your brain perceives less pain and fatigue. This helps you keep going.
There is also evidence, says Naughton, that caffeine can be beneficial for “improving sprints (a byproduct of improving reaction time), skills and fine motor control. So with a sport like football, which has a huge physical component but also quite a large skill component, it’s a useful supplement”.
A fitness coach at one Premier League club, who spoke to The Athletic on condition of anonymity to protect their position, says that players take caffeine gel or gum before training or a match to feel “more mentally alert”. He estimates “at least 50 per cent” of the club’s players use caffeine gum daily, which they feel takes effect quicker than other forms.
“On a training day, we have supplements available for them to pick at if they need to and the most popular thing they will come and ask for is a caffeine gum just before we start, which we’re happy to give out,” says the coach. “On a matchday, we have all the supplements spread out for them in the changing room and they’ll just pick at them as and when they need them.
“It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach. There will be lads who have it walking out for kick-off and some who take it before warm-ups, 40 minutes before kick-off, but they will probably end up having another one before kick-off. It depends on individual preference. We’re not precious about how much they have and when, it’s whatever works for them.”
He says players are advised that the more they dose up on caffeine during the week, the less of an effect it could have on a matchday, as they might build a “tolerance” to it. But it can be hard to police habits when players are outside of the training ground.
Once upon a time, players would regularly socialise in pubs or bars. These days, they are far more likely to meet for coffee and most clubs have high-end coffee machines ready to produce the goods for players on arrival at the training ground. “It’s that whole coffee culture,” says the coach. “Since that’s boomed, the benefits of caffeine on performance is something that’s taken off.”
The popularity of the gum is based on several factors, according to Dr Adam Field, a lecturer in sport science and elite performance at Manchester Metropolitan University — last year he led a study looking at the effect of caffeine gum on performance in extra time.
“One (reason for its popularity) is because it’s so rapidly absorbed into the system,” he tells The Athletic. “A caffeine beverage can take up to 60 minutes to be in the system whereas the gum bypasses the gut. It’s absorbed through receptors in the mouth so is able to be used much more quickly.”
Once players start chewing, Field says 85 per cent of the caffeine content from the gum can be in their system as soon as five to 10 minutes later, and 100 per cent by 15 minutes. If you’re a substitute called off the bench or a player entering extra time, that rapid absorption is especially useful.
The other reason some players prefer the gum, says Field, is that players can find it difficult to stomach liquid around matches. “They can bring quite a lot of gastrointestinal discomfort but with gum, they’re not taking anything in that might make them uncomfortable and affect performance.”
The rise of caffeine gum enabled Frenchman Ludovic Rachou to take his product OneGum from a startup brand in 2013 to one used by Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain, the French national team and four clubs in the UK (including two of the top five in the Premier League at the time Rachou spoke to The Athletic).
Rachou was freshly graduated from business school when a friend came to him having read about an energy chewing gum designed by the United States military in the 1990s to help soldiers complete 24-48 hour missions. Given France’s gum consumption — “In 2013, France was the biggest gum consumer behind the U.S. and still is,” says Rachou — and the huge popularity of Red Bull, they decided to launch their own caffeine gum.
“We started the business by sampling at petrol stations during the summer,” says Rachou. “Why petrol stations? It’s basically where you need the product the most, and you know, everyone needs to pee, so everyone stops there. Rich, poor; it doesn’t matter.”
Without knowing it, Rachou handed a sample to the doctor of French club Monaco and not long afterwards, started to see online orders coming in from a club email address. “We tried reaching out to them but they never replied. One day, the girl from accounting called us and said, ‘We need a proper invoice’, and that’s how we started a discussion with the staff.”
Rachou started supplying Monaco in 2015, the same year that Kylian Mbappe made his senior debut at the club. The following year, France reached the final of Euro 2016 but lost against Portugal. “Three days later, we received an email from the French football team through our website asking, ‘Can we find your product close to the training ground?’. We thought it was a joke.”
The team’s medical staff told Rachou that a player from the final requested the product after the defeat, claiming if they’d had it, they would have won. He admits that for some players, the gum is as much mental support as anything else — something they believe will give them a higher chance of success. Others, he says, use it “just because their buddy on the team is taking it”.
And for some, it simply becomes part of their routine; a habit they become tied to. “I get physios calling me saying, ‘We need the gum this week because we are out and if we don’t have it for this game it’s going to be terrible’. They’re addicts, basically. Sometimes it’s more about being safe and having the product than anything else — it’s not going to change their whole performance.”
Field’s study found that those who consumed gum with 200mg of caffeine before extra time maintained their reaction times, while those who took a placebo saw their reaction times diminish. But there was a downside: “The gum had a negative impact on the composure of these players” says Field. “So we have to be careful about prescribing caffeine, especially before a nerve-wracking event like a penalty shootout, which requires players to maintain self-control.”
The use of the word “prescribing” is interesting. Those The Athletic spoke to for this article were all clear that supplementing with caffeine is ultimately the player’s choice, largely because the response to caffeine can vary widely. There is growing evidence to suggest this is partly down to variations in genes which have been used to identify individuals as “fast” or “slow” caffeine metabolisers, and as having a “high” or “low” caffeine sensitivity, respectively.
The general response to caffeine is an increase in heart rate and blood pressure. “For sporting performance, we want that,” says Naughton. “That’s a beneficial effect and it’s going to happen as a consequence of the exercise they’re doing anyway so it’s not a negative.” But some players might also “get the jitters and feel a bit shaky,” says Naughton. “It has a knock-on effect on your sleep and can increase feelings of anxiety.
“What you don’t want is someone who’s in the dressing room about to go out and feels like their heart is beating through their chest. If they struggle a little bit with nerves or anxiety about performing in front of 60,000 people, maybe they don’t even need caffeine because that is enough of a buzz for them.”
The story of Fulham left-back Antonee Robinson’s failed transfer to Milan in January 2020 is likely to convince some players to tread carefully with caffeine.
A Wigan Athletic player at the time, Robinson was on the brink of a dream move to Italy until his medical revealed an irregular heart rhythm. The club wanted to do further tests before finalising the deal, but time was too tight before the transfer window closed, so Robinson’s move collapsed.
High doses of caffeine did not agree with Antonee Robinson (Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)
He was booked in for an investigative procedure to discover the cause, but the nationwide lockdown caused by the Covid-19 pandemic meant that his operation had to be postponed. By the time it was rescheduled a few months later, the irregularity had disappeared.
“It seems like the issue was caffeine-related,” explained Robinson when he spoke to The Athletic in September 2020. “During the lockdown, I wasn’t having caffeine and then, by the time I was supposed to have my procedure in June, the irregularity had seemed to have gone away, so they attributed it to caffeine. I didn’t end up needing the procedure on my heart. On the medical here (Fulham), it looked fine as well.”
Robinson is not a regular coffee drinker but had started taking caffeine shots before games that season. “I’d never had symptoms of anything to do with the heart, so it was complete news to me. I’m not taking them now and I still feel the same (in performance). So in hindsight, I wish I had not taken them!”
While Robinson’s experience is uncommon, there is another negative effect to consider: its impact on sleep. The length of time that caffeine remains in your system (measured by its half-life, the hours it takes for the body to eliminate half the drug) is something researchers can’t agree on, with estimates ranging from three hours up to nine. While the general population are broadly advised not to drink coffee after around 2pm, for footballers playing evening matches, those timings become problematic.
“We do try to say, ‘Limit yourselves to pre-noon’,” says the Premier League fitness coach. “But it depends on the time of day we’re training. If we have an afternoon session then they might have a gum or an energy gel with caffeine in just to perk them up a bit. And on a matchday, you just have to deal with it after a game. They’ll moan that they can’t sleep until three or four in the morning but the match is more important. They know that and are happy to roll with it.”
Naughton recalls working at a club involved in European competition where some players avoided caffeine for the midweek game. “Footballers often struggle to sleep after games anyway because they’re going over the game in their head or travelling back late, and some individuals found that when they had caffeine that became too much. They wanted to take it but if you’ve got a game on Wednesday and have to play again on Saturday, you might ask the question: is that performance improvement on Wednesday going to have a knock-on effect where I’m physically in no condition to play on the Saturday?”
For sleep specialist Anna West, who works with Premier League and Champions League clubs, a question that needs to be addressed is why caffeine is needed in the first place.
“It’s needed because football and scheduling doesn’t fit human physiology,” she says. “Because we need to get them to adapt to this crazy structure of football.” The most crucial thing, she says, is that players are educated about caffeine: how much to take, when to take it, and the impact it can have on hydration (and therefore energy levels), which affects sleep because you produce less melatonin when mildly dehydrated.
“If you have a lot of caffeine in your system you will probably manage to fall asleep at some point, but the quality of your sleep will be declining because the body struggles a bit to get into the slow wave or deep sleep phase that plays a crucial role in their recovery,” she says. “I’m not saying they shouldn’t take it because chances are they may sleep poorly anyway after a game, so if they do, why not get the performance benefit? But they should take it based on an informed choice and if they get it from the club it should be followed up with education.”
She compares it to trying to lose weight, when a pill is not usually the lasting solution, unlike changing your daily habits. “Caffeine can become an easy way out of seeking your energy. But if you have these basic factors in place and work with nutrition in the right way, you don’t have these spikes and dips in your blood sugar level, when you can feel low on energy and then seek out caffeine. So taking caffeine should be part of a bigger knowledge intervention, which is why multidisciplinary work is so important.”
There is a time when West believes caffeine can have a positive impact on sleep, though. The morning after a late kick-off, players she works with are encouraged to wake up around the same time they normally would. “I don’t encourage them to sleep in, because in reality that would mean that I allowed them to build up a jet lag in their system every time they have a game and we all know how we feel after jet lag. Sleeping a little longer is OK but a long lie-in is not optimal.
“If they feel tired in the morning, I don’t recommend a caffeine gum, but we might make sure that we have a coffee truck outside of the training ground, so that they get the benefit of two things: 1) natural daylight, helping the body reset itself naturally and 2) the caffeine in the coffee to give them an energy kick and help reset the body clock again.
“The sleep we focus on would not be matchday sleep, it’s matchday-plus-one sleep. We also recommend they stop taking caffeine early on matchday-plus-one, so we don’t remove too much sleep pressure at the wrong time the following day. Then they can go to bed on matchday-plus-one and get that really restorative sleep.”
Caffeine is not the enemy, then, but the question is, as West points out: “Are we seeing an increase in consumption because the system has changed?”
Are players simply finding a “quick fix” to a problem that’s not of their own making?
(Top photo: Nikos Pekiaridis/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
