The World Cup is a big deal (it’s true!) and coaches are working to ensure that all their players are in tip-top shape for the event. For some coaches, including Mexico’s Miguel Herrera, that includes barring their players from engaging in sex.
The longstanding idea is that sex is tiresome and that players who engage in funny business will be too exhausted to play against the world’s best.
“If a player cannot endure a month or 20 days without having intercourse, then you are not prepared to be a professional,” Herrera said. “Let’s play a World Cup, we’re not going to a party.”
Naturally, reporters are running to every coach in the world in order to see where they fall on the “sex is good/bad in preparation for kicking a ball around” scale. Jurgen Klinsmann is approaching the whole issue with a more relaxed view.
“We are very casual in the way we approach things. Their families can come pretty much any time, they will be at the games, they can come to the hotel and we can have barbecues together. I think every nation is different.
I played in different countries where you didn’t see your girlfriend or your wife for two months. That was more the Italian background when I played in Italy. Every team and every country handles that differently based on their culture. So I respect the Mexican approach because it is their culture.
“We have a group of guys together and an environment together that is very open, it’s very casual. But once we go on the field for training and for the games we are very serious and down to business.”
Which approach is actually more effective? Turns out, Jurgen is definitely taking the right path. Let’s consult science:
Despite a long history of myth, there is no evidence that sex impairs athletic performance.
“Coaches over the past four, five or six decades have stated that their players should not engage in sex before athletic events because it will weaken their performance without any serious research to support that or any base of scientific theory to understand why that’s wrong,” said Tommy Boone, an exercise physiologist at the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, Minn., and author of “Sex Before Athletic Competition: Myth or Fact.” “There simply isn’t anything in the medical literature to support abstinence.”
