Objectives: To examine several issues related to drug use in English professional football. More particularly the project sought to gather data on: players' use of permitted supplements (mineral and vitamin pills and creatine); whether they sought advice, and if so from whom, about their use of supplements; their experience of and attitudes towards drug testing; their views on the extent of the use of banned performance enhancing and recreational drugs in football; and their personal knowledge of players who used such drugs. Methods: With the cooperation of the Professional Footballers Association (PFA), reply paid postal questionnaires were delivered to the home addresses of all 2863 members of the PFA. A total of 706 questionnaires were returned, a response rate of just under 25%. Results: Many players use supplements, although almost one in five players does so without seeking qualified professional advice from anyone within the club. Blood tests are rarely used to monitor the health of players. One third of players had not been tested for drugs within the preceding two years, and 60% felt that they were unlikely to be tested in the next year. The use of performance enhancing drugs appears to be rare, although recreational drugs are commonly used by professional footballers: 6% of respondents indicated that they personally knew players who used performance enhancing drugs, and 45% of players knew players who used recreational drugs. Conclusions: There is a need to ensure that footballers are given appropriate advice about the use of supplements in order to minimise the risk of using supplements that may be contaminated with banned substances. Footballers are tested for drugs less often than many other elite athletes. This needs to be addressed. The relatively high level of recreational drug use is not reflected in the number of positive tests. This suggests that many players who use recreational drugs avoid detection. It also raises doubts about the ability of the drug testing programme to detect the use of performance enhancing drugs.

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Using semi-structured tape-recorded interviews, this study focuses on the ways in which managers maintain control over players in professional soccer clubs. More specifically, the article focuses on the ways in which disciplinary codes are established by managers and the sanctions that are imposed on players for breaches of club discipline. The findings highlight the arbitrary character of these codes and the central part played by intimidation and abuse, both verbal and physical, as aspects of managerial control within clubs. We argue that these techniques of managerial control reflect the origins of professional soccer in late Victorian England, when professional players were the equivalent of industrial workers and, like industrial workers, were seen as requiring authoritarian regulation and control. This pattern of management has persisted in professional soccer long after it has been superseded in industrial relations more generally because, while many aspects of the management of soccer clubs have involved increasing professionalization and bureaucratization, the role of the manager has proved remarkably resistant to these processes. The authority of the team manager continues to be based on traditional forms of authoritarianism and this allows managers an unusually high degree of autonomy in defining their own role, while placing relatively few constraints on their authority in relation to players.

Objective: To examine the ways in which confidential matters are dealt with in the context of the relationship between the club doctor (or physiotherapist) and the player as patient in English professional football clubs. Methods: Semistructured tape recorded interviews with 12 club doctors, 10 club physiotherapists, and 27 current and former players. A questionnaire was also sent to 90 club doctors; 58 were returned. Results: There is among club doctors and physiotherapists no commonly held code of ethics governing how much and what kind of information about players may properly be passed on to managers; associated with this, there is considerable variation from one club to another in terms of the amount and kind of information passed on to managers. In some clubs, medical staff attempt to operate more or less on the basis of the rules governing confidentiality that apply in general practice, but in other clubs, medical staff are more ready to pass on personal information about players. In some situations, this raises serious ethical questions. Conclusions: Guidelines dealing with confidentiality in practitioner-patient relationships in medical practice have long been available and have recently been restated, specifically in relation to the practice of sports medicine, by the British Olympic Association, the British Medical Association, and the Football Association. This is a welcome first step. However, if the guidelines are to have an impact on practice, detailed consideration needs to be given to ensuring their effective implementation; if this is to be achieved, consideration also needs to be given to identifying those aspects of the culture and organisation of professional football clubs that may hinder the full and effective implementation of those guidelines.