Major league soccer players have fewer alcohol problems than the men’s average, but that’s only since the 1960s. An article about this was published in The BMJ.
Drinking is deeply ingrained in football culture for players and fans alike, and many notable players have suffered from alcohol addiction during and after their gaming careers. Many have assumed that football players drink excessively to relieve stress due to the constant pressure on them, but few full-scale studies have been done on this problem.
Scientists from the Swedish Carolingian Institute examined the health of 6,007 male football players who played in Sweden’s top league, Allsvenskan, from 1924 to 2019. Their health and relationship to alcohol were compared with 56,168 ordinary men adjusted for age and region of residence. The median follow-up period was 27 years, during which 257 (4.3%) football players and 3528 (6.3%) regular men were diagnosed with alcohol-related disorders.
It turned out that the risk of developing such a disorder in football players is about 30% lower than in men overall. While this only applies to players who have played their first seasons at the highest level since the early 1960s, players from earlier eras had the same risk as the average male. In addition, the situation changed with age adjustment: at age 75, former football players were more likely to develop alcoholism than the general population. None of these parameters are in any way related to career success or the number of goals scored and position on the field. When analyzing drug-related problems, it turned out that football players have them 78% less than other people.
In the future, the authors plan to conduct a similar study among football fans.