# How pseudoscience is fooling football

> Elite performance director Claire-Marie Roberts exposes the bogus treatments and shortcuts duping clubs and players.
- Title: How pseudoscience is fooling football · the Guardian
- Summary: Elite performance director Claire-Marie Roberts exposes the bogus treatments and shortcuts duping clubs and players. Football clubs waste millions on…
- Keywords: claire-marie roberts, pseudoscience in football, cryotherapy, kinesiology tape, sports performance, supplements, coventry city, premier league, mclaren formula one, evidence-based training, sports science, player recovery
- Source: the Guardian — https://theguardian.com/football/2026/sep/22/how-pseudoscience-is-duping-football-claire-marie-roberts-interview
- Published: 2026-09-22T07:00:38+00:00
- Read time: 2 min
- Topics: claire-marie roberts, pseudoscience in football, cryotherapy, kinesiology tape, sports performance, supplements, coventry city, premier league, mclaren formula one, evidence-based training, sports science, player recovery
## The pitch never stops
As Coventry's performance director, Claire-Marie Roberts received up to 50 LinkedIn messages weekly from vendors hawking devices, supplements, and technologies promising miraculous results for players.
## Oxygen in a can
One caller pitched Roberts on bottled oxygen, claiming they'd captured atmospheric oxygen and packaged it for players. She declined, recognizing it as basic chemistry being repackaged as innovation.

> Right … oxygen in a can
## The science-practice gap widens
Roberts says professional football is increasingly duped by pseudoscience, with coaches and players desperate for shortcuts. The gap between what science proves and what clubs actually do keeps growing.

> It's bordering on exploitation.
## Cryotherapy chambers lack proof
Most elite clubs have cryotherapy chambers, but staff can't explain why. Roberts says there's minimal evidence they work, and they might actually blunt muscle adaptation needed for improvement.

> Most clubs have got cryotherapy chambers, most people cannot articulate to you why they use them.
## Sleep and food beat ice baths
Roberts emphasizes that sleep quality and nutrition are the proven recovery methods. Cryotherapy chambers won't help if players aren't sleeping well or eating properly.

> Sleep and nutrition are your best recovery modalities.
## Supplements aren't shortcuts
The multibillion-pound supplement industry pushes pills without evidence. Roberts says only vitamin D and vitamin C are evidence-based for northern hemisphere athletes; everything else should target specific deficiencies.
## Copying top clubs blindly
Clubs copy practices from Manchester City and Chelsea without understanding the science. Roberts calls this a misappropriation of confidence that drives wrong behaviour across the sport.

> People passively suck these things up.
## Kinesiology tape is placebo
Players from Cristiano Ronaldo to Gareth Bale wear kinesiology tape, but Roberts says there's no evidence it prevents injury or improves performance. It's purely psychological.

> K-tape is a placebo.
## Football resists science
Roberts says football is more susceptible to pseudoscience than any sport she's worked in, partly because stakes are high and the game is fundamentally anti-intellectual and anti-science.
## Managers cling to old ways
Veteran managers insist on practices they've used for decades, or adopt trends from coaches with no scientific background. This perpetuates pseudoscience across the sport.
## Put science first
Roberts believes football must employ qualified staff to scrutinize claims and make science central to decision-making. Without this, pseudoscience will only worsen.
## Key takeaway

Football clubs waste millions on unproven practices like cryotherapy and kinesiology tape instead of focusing on sleep, nutrition, and proper training.