One afternoon two seasons ago, an EFL manager was tidying a locker during the players’ warm-up when, underneath a pile of socks and shorts, he found a tin of something he did not recognise.
The kit man revealed it was a substance known as ‘snus’ and conceded the support staff had not shared their knowledge of it. It prompted the manager to do a sweep of the lockers and he was astonished to find around 75 per cent of players had snus carefully buried away. At his next club, he put the number at around 50 per cent.
After researching snus and finding links to gum disease and various cancers, he tried to educate the players, but he found himself powerless. They were convinced it gave them an edge on the pitch.
Snus is a smokeless tobacco product placed between the lip and gum that originated in Scandinavia and gradually became a mass-market product after Sweden implemented a ban on smoking indoors in 2005. It is socially ingrained in everyday life there but also within football culture, to the extent physios have been known to run on with a replacement pouch for a player, while board members would excuse themselves from meetings to resupply.
Many players from the region have introduced it to team-mates in the UK but tobacco snus is banned from sale in the UK. In its place, all-white nicotine pouches have swamped the dressing rooms of professional football clubs, with brands such as Siberia and Killa selling multiple different flavours on their branded tins.
“A doctor I know had just joined one of the top Premier League clubs and saw there was a huge snus problem,” Dr Chris James, a clinical psychologist working in elite sport, tells The Athletic.
“The manager was very concerned about the use of it as there were pouches scattered everywhere but the club didn’t really understand why they were using it or the impact it was having.
“He wanted me to come in and provide some education to the players, but football is an incredibly frustrating world to work in because clubs often have these fleeting moments of, ‘Oh, this is a problem, we need to sort it’, but then they run into trouble, the manager comes under pressure and it all gets binned. I never even got in the door.”
Through his work in elite sport, Dr James has worked with numerous Premier League clubs and players, but after launching Sleep Athletic in 2020 he began to notice a pattern in which conversations with footballers around sleep were commonly diverting to snus.
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“Another doctor from a big club contacted me about one player who was having chronic sleep problems,” he says.
“He was only getting five hours of sleep, when most elite athletes should be getting at least nine. I did an assessment and it transpired he was using an unbelievable amount of snus, around four pods per day.
“It was almost constant and, since it is a stimulant, it was likely preventing his body’s natural process of winding down and sleeping. This was the real issue but he was super addicted and didn’t want to change as he believed it helped him relax and de-stress.
“He was still performing as a first-team player, but the staff were frustrated as they thought this was someone who could be an international player.”
In another encounter, a leading player in the women’s game explained how it had become rife and was used as an emotional crutch to alleviate anxiety and pressure, but the club made it clear they did not want that response to be made public.
It is partly why snus has been hiding in plain sight within football for years.
First cemented in the public consciousness by Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy in 2016, its visibility has grown, with Arsenal defender Ben White seen on holiday last month carrying multiple tins in his hand.
Beyond these brief snapshots and anecdotal evidence from The Athletic’s tackling of the subject last year, the scale of usage was largely guesswork.
But in May, Loughborough University published a seminal research paper — in conjunction with the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) — showing that one in five players are using snus in English professional football and two in five have tried it at least once.
The results were produced from an anonymous survey of 628 male players and 51 female players, with 16 medical and performance personnel providing their insight into its presence in football.
Daniel Read, lead researcher of the study, believes the high response rate was due to their answers being submitted via a QR code from the PFA and not through their clubs, where there is a fear of being caught in some places.
Snus is mostly bought in shops or online and there is nothing legally stopping players from using it, nor are there any directives from UK Anti-Doping (UKAD).
A majority of the players use it before and after training, after games, on days off and nights out, but over 36 per cent report cravings, and 50 per cent of the men’s game indicated they want to quit in the next year. More than half of those in the men’s game and almost three-quarters in the women’s game reported elements of nicotine dependence.
More than half of players first used it because a team-mate did, showing how social assimilation plays a part, but more than a third say they use it without thinking.
Boredom (47 per cent and 55 per cent) and stress relief (43 per cent and 55 per cent) were the main two reasons for using in both the men’s and women’s games, and by far the biggest performance benefit they report is relaxation (55 per cent).
This poster is commonly displayed at professional clubs to educate players about the implications of using snus
A key reason snus has been allowed to infiltrate so many dressing rooms is that the impact on health and performance is unknown.
However, a head of performance at an EFL club tells The Athletic they have uncovered one effect of snus, having conducted in-house research via continued glucose monitoring with a group of first-team players.
The players agreed to send pictures of everything that passed their lips for six weeks, and that included snus for the 30 per cent of participants who were regular users.
Club staff could see in real-time, via a mobile app, how food, exercise, sleep and snus affected their blood sugar levels. Although yet to be made public, they discovered that there was an average increase of seven per cent in their blood glucose levels within five to 10 minutes of applying snus to the gum.
They realised the impact of their precisely calculated plans for carbohydrate loading before matches and refuelling afterwards were being unwittingly diluted. Increased blood sugar blocks the body’s natural insulin response and can have knock-on effects on metabolism and cardiovascular function. It can lead to quicker fatigue during exercise.
In the Loughborough-PFA study, a performance staff member reported that a player suffered a significant tachycardia (when your heart suddenly beats much faster than normal) that had no explanation other than the fact he had been using snus. Another saw a correlation between injury-prone players and regular users, while one club registered every player at a local dentist as a precaution.
One academy director posted a link to the research paper in the team group chat to highlight the subject as it is filtering down into under-21 and under-18 groups.
A large number of academy player-care staff are involved in a national group chat designed to ensure they are aware of additional needs young players may need support with. One member of the group shared that snus had started making its way down into their club’s pre-professional age groups, while another performance coach recalls a scholar selling it outside of football as a second income.