Dr Claire-Marie Roberts was working for Coventry City when she received an unexpected call asking if she knew the proportion of oxygen in the air. As performance director, tasked with helping players fulfil their potential, she was familiar with sales pitches for supposedly groundbreaking products. Some weeks, as many as 50 LinkedIn messages arrived promoting devices, supplements or technologies that promised extraordinary improvements.
The caller pointed out that oxygen makes up only 21% of the atmosphere, something Roberts regarded as basic school chemistry. He then explained that his company had packaged oxygen in a can and suggested Coventry’s players might benefit from using it.
Roberts still laughs when recalling the proposal. Unsurprisingly, she declined the opportunity to purchase canned oxygen for the squad.
Roberts has worked in elite sport and professional football for decades. Her career includes nine years with the Premier League and two years at Coventry, where she helped the club secure promotion by winning the Championship. She later became McLaren’s director of human performance. She is alarmed by the extent to which questionable science influences professional football, with staff being persuaded by dubious vendors and wealthy players searching for quick improvements.
In Roberts’s view, the divide between scientific research and everyday practice is growing. She believes the situation is deteriorating as polished marketing makes weak or unsupported claims appear credible, sometimes approaching exploitation.
She says athletes are especially vulnerable to products promising an effortless competitive advantage or faster preparation and recovery. For Roberts, that desire to bypass the fundamentals creates a poor foundation for genuine progress.
Roberts argues that several methods widely used in top-level football have limited scientific support. Cryotherapy chambers, now common at leading training facilities, are one example. When those chambers are unavailable, players often turn to ice baths instead. Harry Kane, for instance, was once pictured standing in a wheelie bin filled with ice after a Bayern Munich match at the Club World Cup.
Although many clubs have cryotherapy chambers, Roberts says staff often struggle to explain precisely why they use them. She considers the supporting research extremely limited, apart from a small amount of work suggesting a possible connection with dementia prevention.
Roberts adds that cryotherapy might even interfere with recovery by reducing muscular adaptation. She says clubs must consider both the purpose and timing of its use. For effective recovery, quality sleep and proper nutrition remain far more important, and a whole-body cryotherapy session cannot compensate when those essentials are neglected.
Players also look for shortcuts with nutrition. The supplement market is worth billions and has become deeply embedded in football. Roberts says vitamin D has a strong scientific basis because people living in the northern hemisphere often lack it due to limited sunlight. Vitamin C can also be insufficient in many diets, but other supplements should generally address a clearly identified deficiency.
She warns that many people take pills without understanding their purpose. Supplement use should respond to an individual requirement; someone who does not eat fish, for example, may have a legitimate reason to take fish oil.
Roberts stresses that performance and recovery depend primarily on sufficient, high-quality sleep and nutrition. Supplements cannot repair the effects of a poor diet, despite the widespread belief that they can. In her view, athletes too often neglect basic habits while searching for an easier solution.
Roberts says she relied on scientific evidence while supporting Frank Lampard’s squad. She also believes many clubs copy methods used by prominent teams without first determining whether those practices are genuinely effective.
She says people often accept these ideas without proper scrutiny. When well-funded teams such as England, Manchester City or Chelsea adopt a product or technique, others may assume it must have a strong scientific foundation. That misplaced confidence can significantly influence conduct while encouraging ineffective practices.
A former swimmer whose injury prevented her from competing at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, Roberts believes football is more vulnerable to these trends than any other sport in which she has worked. She attributes that vulnerability partly to the exceptionally high stakes involved.
Kinesiology tape, commonly called k-tape, is another popular practice Roberts questions. Cristiano Ronaldo, Gareth Bale and David Beckham are among the players who have worn it, with the strips often looking like heavy-duty tape applied to their arms or legs.
Roberts says research does not show that kinesiology tape prevents injuries or improves performance. It may increase bodily awareness and make an athlete feel that treatment has been provided, but it was not used in the professional environments where she worked. She regards it as an obvious but largely ignored problem.
She distinguishes k-tape from conventional strapping. After a shoulder dislocation, strapping can offer limited external support, provide slight protection to the joint and remind the athlete of the injury. Although it is not highly effective, it can serve as a reasonable risk-reduction measure. Roberts considers k-tape, by contrast, to be a placebo.
Long-serving managers sometimes insist on methods they have followed for years. In other cases, coaches without scientific training recommend supposedly revolutionary products they have heard about elsewhere. Roberts believes the situation will continue to deteriorate unless football makes science central to its decisions and hires qualified professionals to assess such claims critically.
She argues that the sport often tries to reach results quickly without completing the difficult foundational work, including maintaining a sound diet, sleeping properly and ensuring that training is of a high standard.
Roberts describes football as historically resistant to intellectual and scientific thinking. Although a small number of clubs approach these issues well, she believes most do not. In her assessment, too few people within the sport consistently apply rigorous critical analysis when evaluating decisions and new ideas.
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