Why would healthy twentysomething professional athletes need to take an average of nearly two doses of (legal) drugs or “nutritional supplements” before every match?

A study commissioned by Fifa and published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine raises that question.

The team doctors of each nation competing in the past two World Cups were asked to list all medicines and supplements given to players in the 72 hours before a game. The results reveal the kind of pill-popping of which Hunter S. Thompson would have been proud.

The average player took 0.8 doses of legal pharmaceuticals (including analgesics, corticosteroids and psycho-tropic drugs) and one dose of nutritional supplements before every game. The study doesn’t break the data down by country or players, although it does indicate that reserves took fewer substances than starters. This makes sense, but it also indicates that those who played regularly may have taken three or four times that amount. Also, because we only know the averages, it’s entirely possible that some countries hardly administered anything to their players, while others stuffed them with pills and supplements. Indeed, one unidentified national team gave each of their players an average of 7.4 nutritional supplements a match in 2006.

Some bits of data are, frankly, worrying. Take NSAIDs (nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs), which are usually prescribed as pain-killers. Some players were given as many as five preparations of NSAIDs before a match, despite, as the study notes, the long-term intake of these substances being linked to dehydration, kidney problems and complications in the healing process. Then again, if you were of a cynical bent, you might also note that NSAIDs reduce inflammation and that muscles that are not inflamed perform more efficiently. Could it be a case of performance enhancement? Who knows? From a medical perspective, it’s a rather grey area, the study finds.

It is also worth noting that the data covers only substances administered in the 72 hours before a game and that it was voluntarily submitted by the team doctors. It’s entirely possible that some of these physicians might have been tempted to fudge their numbers (how would anyone find out?) or that some of them may be unaware of the range of substances given to the players, especially when it comes to nutritional supplements (which, according to the study, are often taken at the urging of the coach, and not the team doctor or dietician).

OK, so professional footballers – at least those at the World Cup – take drugs and supplements in industrial quantities. So what? They’re all legal, right?

Indeed they are. But it does matter. For a start, there’s a reason why there are limits on how much people should take. As the report highlights, sustained and continued use of legal pharmaceuticals and nutritional supplements can have “detrimental effects”. So too can illegal performance-enhancing drugs, which, incidentally, is why they are banned.

But there’s another principle at stake here, one that is far more difficult to pin down. Why are athletes given legal drugs and nutritional supplements? So they can perform better. If that wasn’t the case, they wouldn’t take them. But, again, that is also precisely why some athletes take illegal performance enhancers.

While the former are OK, the latter are banned. Why? Because we have to draw the line somewhere. But on what do we base that “line”? By how much the athletes stand to gain? By how much damage they potentially do to their bodies?

The scale of the whole thing leads you to one of two possible conclusions. Either World Cup footballers are an inherently sickly bunch who need supplements and medicines to stay healthy, or some team doctors are following the letter – not the spirit – of the law when it comes to using drugs to boost performance.

Some may argue that the stresses of modern football force players into a pill-popping regimen that would rival most pensioners. Indeed, as Gianluca Vialli, the former Chelsea manager, likes to say, “Sport is good for you. Professional sport often is not.” There is clearly a very fine line between legal and illegal drug use in football. And, perhaps, we need to rethink a thing or two.

And another thing...

Guardiola creating second Barcelona “Dream Team”

Those who know Josep Guardiola will tell you that he is a very intelligent man, whose strengths include introspection, sensitivity and creativity. Those who know football will tell you that intelligence alone is no guarantee of success in management. And that’s why there were more than a few sceptics when he was handed the Barcelona job in the summer. He was 37 and had a single season of experience under his belt, looking after the club’s B side. After a few early hiccups, Guardiola and Barcelona are flying, with nine consecutive wins in all competitions. What is remarkable is the amount of goals they have scored: 38 in 13 matches. That’s impressive when you consider the question marks over their strike-force at the start of the season. Samuel Eto’o was supposedly finished (and unsuccessfully flogged to a number of clubs). He has 12 goals in 12 games. Thierry Henry was apparently another overpaid ageing dud. Bojan Krkic, at 18, was too young and too small to contribute. Eidur Gudjohnsen was too mediocre. And Lionel Messi’s preseason was disrupted by the Olympic Games. Some are drawing comparisons to Johan Cruyff’s Barcelona “Dream Team” of the early 1990s. It’s a stretch, but they do have one thing in common. The brains of that outfit was a young playmaker named Josep Guardiola. Then, as now, he made beautiful things happen.

Ballack shows his class in row with national coach

Earlier this month, Michael Ballack appeared to criticise Joachim Löw, the Germany coach, suggesting that he needed to be more “honest” and “respectful” towards the side’s veteran players. Unsurprisingly, this caused an immediate rift. Many – including Jürgen Klinsmann, Löw’s predecessor – said that Ballack needed to apologise. According to newspaper reports, he’s done just that. Ballack has proved once again that he’s a class act. The things that he said needed to be said and he was brave to speak up. At the same time, if Löw felt undermined, apologising was the right thing to do. This is how grown men behave.