Football: Powered by caffeine; meet The Athletic’s new football finance expert

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Hello! If you’re hitting your third cup of coffee already, don’t feel bad. You might be turning into a pro footballer.

On the way:

Drink, shot or gum? How footballers are consuming caffeine

Which footballer, of considerable repute in England, has a matchday diet plan like this: a cheese and ham omelette ahead of kick-off combined with three cans of Red Bull and a double espresso?

The answer is Jamie Vardy and while it might not read like the breakfast of champions, it didn’t stop him scoring goals like the best of them or winning a Premier League title with Leicester City. Vardy’s intake is caffeine-heavy — and that makes him entirely conformative.

As a stimulant, caffeine has accepted upsides for professional athletes. Research shows it can reduce pain and fatigue caused by intense exercise and heighten mental focus. But when I dipped into Sarah Shephard’s study of it in football circles, I wasn’t expecting to learn that so many clubs actively facilitate the use of it: 97 per cent in England alone administering it to their squads.

It’s legal, you see, because excessive caffeine — prohibited by the World Anti-Doping Agency between 1987 and 2004 — is essentially unrestricted today. Additionally, sport in general has evolved from the time when tea, coffee and caffeinated energy drinks were king. Caffeine shots have taken over. And the gum you see footballers chewing? It’s likely caffeine gum designed for the same purpose, a thriving business in its own right.

One of the experts Sarah interviewed spoke of a “coffee culture” in football. Caffeine is a go-to supplement that many in the game do not like to go without. But with all products like this, it makes you ask: how healthy is it for them?

The pros and cons

According to performance nutritionist Dr Rob Naughton, caffeine can improve sprints, basic skills and fine motor control, as well as stamina and endurance. On the flip side, it can negatively affect composure and sleep and controlling sleep patterns gets more essential as FIFA’s calendar gets ever more packed.

You might also remember the cautionary tale of the USMNT’s Antonee Robinson, who saw a proposed transfer to Italian Serie A side Milan collapse on the basis of a heart issue which was later blamed on caffeine.

Evangelists of the benefits are plentiful, however. The manufacturer of the OneGum energy brand began supplying France’s national team after one member of their team told others around him that it would have given them the edge when they lost the 2016 European Championship final. Make of this what you will, but the French lifted the World Cup two years later.

Gum has a performance advantage insofar as the human body absorbs the caffeine released by it more quickly than it does from coffee or tea. Unlike snus nicotine pouches, for example, it is utilised in plain sight with clubs’ unequivocal blessing, seemingly without any stigma.

A Premier League fitness coach told Sarah how 50 per cent of those he works with include caffeine in their routines and how supplements are laid out specially before a game — part of football’s staple diet and a breakfast champions swear by.

News round-up

Introducing to The BookKeeper

(Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)

Say hello to The Athletic’s new football finance expert, Chris Weatherspoon — or The BookKeeper, as he’ll be known. There aren’t enough wrestling-style nicknames in sports journalism, in my opinion.

His first article launched today and he leapt in gamely by taking the microscope to Manchester United’s books. It’s CSI-forensic and it untangles the thick strands of accounting brilliantly. I picked out two of his graphs to show to you here.

Image one calculates the sheer amount of money the Glazer Family has earned from United in their near-20 years of majority ownership: £1.35bn ($1.75bn) to be precise, mostly through share sales but partly through dividend payments. Suffice to say, not everybody at Old Trafford is losing and the Glazers remain in possession of a stack of shares and voting rights, too.

But at the same time, you can see below how profits have evaporated from the end of the 2018-19 season onwards, no doubt explaining why the Glazers were open to a minority investment by INEOS and happy to let them do some firefighting. Steep losses can’t mount up forever.

As Chris writes, “Fans and new owners alike could do with the tide turning soon” — and I’m barely scratching the surface of his examination. Fill your boots here.

There’s a Curb Your Enthusiasm gif specially designed for this: United are raising season ticket prices for 2025-26. Who’d have guessed? At least they backtracked on an original thought of hiking them by 20 per cent.

Teenage kicks in the NWSL

History was made in the NWSL over the weekend when Gotham FC’s Mak Whitham became… wait for it… the youngest player in the league’s history — aged just 14. That’s right. We’re talking about a child.

She broke the record as a substitute in a 1-1 draw with Seattle Reign and Melanie Anzidei’s profile of her puts meat on the bones of Whitham’s rapid ascent, explaining how the heck she debuted so young. Given she scored her first professional goal having only just hit her teens, an NWSL bow has been in the post.

I’ve been trying to remember what I was doing at 14. Not this, it’s fair to say.

Around The Athletic

• Hidetoshi Nakata was one of the faces of late 1990s football in Italy, a Japanese icon who got his European break at Perugia. If you’re my age, you’ll recognise him instantly. But he quit at 29 and in this interview with Tom Burrows, he explains that he was never truly a fan of the sport.
• The CONCACAF Nations League Finals are nigh, with the USMNT strongly placed to win them. We’ve compiled a list of the top 20 CONCACAF talents. Keep tabs on number three: Canada’s Jonathan David. He’s poised for a big move away from Lille this summer.
• In the aftermath of the Carabao Cup final, our Newcastle United boys explained how and why the Geordie Nation turned it their way. Listen on Apple and Spotify. 🎙
• 🖱 Most clicked in yesterday’s TAFC: Newcastle breaking their barren cup run. If you look at the graphic below, you’ll find other English teams with big, big streaks to break…

Catch A Match 📺

(Selected games, times ET/GMT)

Women’s Champions League quarter-final first leg: Real Madrid vs Arsenal, 1.45pm/5.45pm; Bayern Munich vs Lyon, 4pm/8pm — both DAZN/TNT Sports.

Barcelona’s Raphinha, who is set to become a victim of La Liga’s scheduling (Aitor Alcalde/Getty Images)

And finally…

Spanish football could do with a metric for expected complaints per season (we’ll call it xC). Day after day, somebody somewhere is whinging about something.

But I’m with Barcelona on this specific battleground: La Liga shoehorning a game against Osasuna (postponed from March 8 after the sudden death of Barca’s first-team doctor) into its diary for March 27, before the current international break technically ends.

It might have washed if Ronald Araujo wasn’t due to play for Uruguay in Bolivia on March 25. Or if Raphinha wasn’t due to play for Brazil in Buenos Aires on March 26. Or if the top of La Liga wasn’t tighter than a Sir Jim Ratcliffe beancounter. You’ll be shocked to learn that Barca have appealed against the decision.

(Top photo: Juan Mabromata/AFP via Getty Images)