Sex & football – a good combination?

France Football have produced an in depth report into the role that sex has to play in the lives of professional footballers – here are their findings.

Sex before football matches is often banned by coaches. The matter also stirs up many beliefs among players, despite scientific evidence which often contradicts their positions on sex.

“If I had been with a different woman, I would have had three times as many national team caps,” a former French international admits it bluntly: too much sex killed his potential. This means that the carnal question, a major taboo in the dressing room, impacts both the body and the mind.

Finding players to speak on this issue is extremely complicated, even when they are offered the cover of anonymity. Hundreds of messages and dozens of calls made by France Football went unanswered for a long time. Whether they are in activity or in retirement, the players refuse to reveal their intimate rituals, those which precede the matches and how they feel it impacts their preparation.

The testimonies that the outlet has collected nevertheless allow us to measure the extent of the beliefs in myths around sex, which are as numerous as they are eccentric.

And this is not a new thing.

A great coach, a major figure in French football, remembers his career as a player in the middle of the last century:

“The staff gave us special instructions at the start of the season with several reminders during the year: we had to test ourselves during the week to find out how long before a match that sex was most harmful to our physical form. The day before, the day before that, or even the day before that? You have to know how to sacrifice your pleasure at this precise moment to be good on the pitch. These are the tips that I passed on to my players afterwards. Sexual intercourse, in men, reduces nerve impulses. This is the problem.”

Similar sex education lessons for Jérôme Alonzo: “Teammates ended up saying: ‘No, I don’t touch my girl the day before the match,” smiles the goalkeeper who played for Marseille, Saint-Étienne and PSG in the 1990s and 2000s. “The coaches kept telling us that you shouldn’t lose the testosterone before a match, so you shouldn’t make love.”

“With older coaches, it was a common belief,” continues Ludovic Obraniak, a former midfielder for Metz, Lille and Bordeaux. “For years, I did nothing the day before matches. At the end of my career, I paid less attention.”

Faced with temptation, there was only one solution for a large number of coaches: going into lockdown mode. One, two, even three days of deprivation at a team hotel to curb all inclinations.

“I am certainly the one of the ones who has used this tactic the most in history,” laughs the same well-known tactician quoted above, aware that his statements will quickly allow him to be recognised.

“On a European scale, I was not the worst. In the past, when AC Milan lost a game, the players didn’t go home, but went straight to the team hotel until the following Saturday. The best players know how to apply the best method to be in shape.”

To sum up, there was and perhaps still is the belief amongst some players and coaches that the practice of ejaculating reduces your ability to run. The specialists contradict this well-known belief around sex in football. “At the beginning of the 20th century, it was believed that losing a drop of sperm was equivalent to losing forty drops of blood and protein,” affirms Jean-Pierre de Mondenard, a sports doctor, who focuses more on male than female athletes in his work.

He continues: “As a community we then saw the practice infibulation, which consists of putting a ring around the foreskin to prevent players from having sexual intercourse.” Author of numerous articles on the subject in the 1990s, de Mondenard is now categorical in what he thinks about these practices: “It’s medicine seen upside down, dogmas that have passed through the generations which are bogus.”

“Sex releases pleasure hormones. Which will relax you, give you a better state of mind. There is a balance that has to be found. And it depends on the individual.”

The common fear that players and coaches share in this department is the balance of hormones. Several sporting greats have championed chastity. Muhammad Ali abstained from sexual activity six weeks before his big fights, Jacques Anquetil said he had no sexual intercourse during his Tour de France wins, in contrast to those lost.

In football, the World Cup is a good event to analyse. For a month, the players’ private lives are subject to the decisions of their coach. In 2014, for example, six coaches formally banned sex. Admittedly, in 2002, in South Korea and Japan, the favourite, France, was eliminated early in August whilst allowing for sexual intercourse on the part of its players during the tournament, whilst Brazil won the World Cup by practising abstinence.

There is no scientific evidence that not having sex before major matches or competition positively impacts on-pitch results. Raymond Domenech’s France team, that made it to the 2006 World Cup final, had significant others visiting the training camp on two occasions during the tournament.

“Abstinence can help increase testosterone levels, the aggression hormone, and create a little sexual frustration,” explains Gérald Kierzek, a physician and author of several works on sexology. It depends what sensation the player wants to have when they are in-game. Kierzek continues: “If you need a little boost of aggression, you can start a period of abstinence to raise testosterone levels. On the other hand, sex releases oxytocin and endorphin, the pleasure hormones. This will relax you, give you a better state of mind. There is a balance that has to be found. And it depends on the preferences of individuals.”

Ex-Bordeaux midfielder Ludovic Obraniak admits openly: “An orgasm gave me a relaxation that made me want to sleep, so I didn’t feel comfortable going on to play afterwards. I wanted to stay locked in, under pressure and keep the adrenaline going.”

Former Nîmes and Metz midfielder Pierre Bouby feels differently: “I had no superstitions at all, I didn’t think it through. When you start marking dates in your calendar to fuck, it gets complicated. If I was with my girlfriend the morning of the match and she started to turn me on, I acted as I normally would. I didn’t ask myself whether it would cause me issues [for the game]. I’ve never made this connection between the two, it would have been interesting for me to think about it. But honestly when I played badly, I knew why. When I was good, I knew why too. And when I was under pressure, I smoked a cigarette, another way to bring stress down.”

Jérôme Alonzo adds: “The day before the matches, I never wanted to make love. I was already thinking about the match, because I was a little worried, for a thousand reasons. I just wanted to be left alone, to watch a documentary about whales in Antarctica. I think I’m a pretty good-natured person in everyday life, but in the 24 hours before a match, you shouldn’t break my stride. And that obviously includes sex. That’s why I’ve always liked going cold turkey, I have this lonely side. My refusal the day before the matches was psychological, never physical.”

Modern coaches are less superstitious and attempt to impose less sex-related restrictions on their players:

This is good news for Benjamin Nivet, who remembers playing for legendary French coach Guy Roux at Auxerre: “My wife was studying in Dijon, so she was gone from Sunday evening to Friday evening. We often played on Saturdays. So he said to me: “You don’t see your girlfriend the day before the match, she doesn’t sleep at your house, I know how it’s going to be, you won’t stop all night!” He was incredible.”

Franck Haise, the RC Lens coach, is not interested in regulating his players’ sex lives:

“I don’t deal with all that, even less so when it comes to setting rules. I already have enough to do in terms of group cohesion, dynamics, management of each player’s egos, rather than dealing in this very personal issue.”

Dr de Mondenard: “During sex, you expend 6 calories per minute.” That’s half of what the body burns while playing football.

In 2013, a group of Canadian academics fitted 21 couples with bracelets during their sexual activity. The average energy expenditure was calculated to be 3.6 calories per minute – for context, that sits somewhere between walking at 4.8km/h and jogging at 8km/h. Dr de Mondenard adds: “This is not going to drain your energy,” adding that sexual intercourse lasts on average for “5.4 minutes.” de Mondenard suggests that the greater issue with sexual activity in terms of causing a player damage is hurting themselves by accident in the act: “The only physical risk is getting a sprain. If you try acrobatics and you land badly, watch out.”

Ex-Tottenham boss Antonio Conte had the following to say to L’Équipe Magazine in 2019 on the issue:

“During a competition, the act should not last long, you should have to make the least possible effort, therefore the effort should come from your partner. And then when you do it, do it preferably with your wife, because, in this way, you are not obliged to perform impressively!”

One of the key topics of discussion is timing. Sexual activity should not encroach on sleep, the foundation of recovery and pillar for performance. So what about masturbation? “It’s a sensitive subject, and yet we’re all used to it because we spend a lot of time alone,” Jérôme Alonzo admits. “Sometimes you need to release the tension. We never talked about it between us, but it happens, I don’t find it unhealthy. When you leave for a fortnight on pre-season training, it seems difficult to me to say that you will not unload the gun. It’s not true. We are guys, we have desires, needs, we release a lot of testosterone. There were no women during pre-season, so we had to do what we had to do.”

Some coaches swear by masturbation. Safet Susic, coach of Bosnia and Herzegovina at the 2014 World Cup, was ambiguous: “There will be no sex, the players will have to do it on their own. There is always masturbation!”

“A useful de-stressor, therefore, during long trips, pre-season and pre-match stays. But, for the rest of the season, “it amounts to the same as normal sex,” objects Gérald Kierzek. “If you ejaculate in a corner, all alone, it’s like making love with your partner, there is no impact,” insists Dr de Mondenard.

The answer to all these questions lies in a study led by Juan Sztajzel, a specialist in general internal medicine at Hôpital de La Tour, in Geneva, Switzerland. By placing 15 high-level athletes (eight from team sports, five long-distance runners and two weightlifters) on bicycles, the scientist compared the level of testosterone and the ability to concentrate of each athlete over two days: one with sexual intercourse, the other without. The survey concludes that sex has “no negative influence, except in the case of intercourse in the two hours before a competition.”

This is what doctors call the recharge period. “There is a flattening of the hormonal batteries, then they recharge,” adds Gérald Kierzek.

The issue of sex in women’s football is even less discussed than in men’s football. The male coaches in women’s football that France Football contacted confirm that they do not raise the subject with their players. “It’s embarrassing when you’re not of the same gender,” sums up one of them.

Another coach also believes that he is far from getting to this point: “since we do not yet dare to enter the dressing room without being accompanied by another woman from the staff.” Even with a coach, sex remains an intimidating discussion. And female players preserve their privacy, like their male counterparts. However, “sex produces exactly the same effects in women,” responds Gérald Kierzek.

Women also secrete testosterone, oxytocin and endorphin. Like men, they can “balance” their sexual relations according to their objectives. With one notable difference: the two-hour rule is considerably longer. “During sex, the woman takes much longer to reach the decisive moment, the orgasm,” specifies Jean-Pierre de Mondenard, sports doctor. “She’s more relaxed, longer, so if she’s looking to be aggressive, it can be penalising to have sex a few hours before a match. Overall, hormones loom larger in women, who also have to manage menstruation.”

Sex or not – it’s not as big a deal as the football has historically made it out to be.

James Thorpe | GFFN