It’s the live match on television. Aston Villa are taking on Arsenal in front of a global audience of millions. The home team are heading towards a 4-2 defeat and, when the camera pans to Unai Emery, Villa’s manager, your eyes are drawn to the player in the dugout behind him.
These are the moments when Bertrand Traore, one of Villa’s substitutes, can be seen lifting up his top lip before appearing to place something alongside his gum. Aware that the footage has circulated on social media, Traore denies it was snus.
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Rewind eight months and another scene from England’s top division: this time it’s Newcastle United versus Liverpool. Mark Gillespie, Newcastle’s third-choice goalkeeper, might not realise the television cameras are on him. He is sitting in the stand, inserting something beneath his lip, in a scene that is being replicated in dressing rooms up and down the country. Newcastle’s approach is that they see it as a personal decision.
Snus is a tobacco product that comes in small parcels, similar to a teabag sachet, and is placed alongside the gum to release nicotine into the bloodstream. Users talk of it giving them a calming effect and a sense of well-being. Stronger variants can involve a physical spark, which many footballers clearly feel is advantageous when the sport has never been quicker than it is now.
Lee Johnson, a manager who has seen its effects close-up, has told The Athletic that from his experiences he estimates 35 to 40 per cent of players are taking snus. If anything, he says, the numbers are probably higher. They just don’t want you to know about it.
“It’s a bit of a taboo subject; nobody is talking about it,” says Johnson, the manager of Hibernian and, before that, Sunderland, Bristol City, Barnsley and Oldham Athletic. “But it has become a culture. It’s getting worse and we need to educate these lads because it’s highly addictive. I don’t feel they understand the true threat of it over the long term.”
Today, an investigation by The Athletic reveals:
- One high-profile England international is “fully reliant (on snus)… rarely seen without one under his gum”.
- Another big-name Premier League player weaned himself off snus after a long period of struggling for form.
- Players at a League One club have been selling snus to 13- and 14-year-olds in the academy.
- One player at a League Two club had “a bit of cancer cut out of his gum” because of heavy use.
- The Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) is to undertake a research study as part of a new campaign, starting this summer, to warn players of the potential risks.
That snus has created this level of scrutiny might seem curious to all those who have never heard of the stuff, let alone experienced the sense of calm it is said to induce. However, the PFA’s involvement is a clear indication that people within the sport are concerned about whether the relevant players fully understand the implications.
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“I don’t know how to fight it,” says Johnson. “It’s not on the banned drugs list, so you can’t stop them doing it. They’re big lads and, in the end, you give up. But it really bugs me, particularly when I see young lads, aged 16 to 21, on it.
“If I walked into the training ground with four or five cigarettes between my fingers, people would look at me and say, ‘How unprofessional, how bad does that look?’. But it’s no different (with snus). It’s the same amount of nicotine going into the body, it’s just hidden.”
What is increasingly clear is that snus has become part of everyday life within modern-day football, used by players from elite clubs such as Manchester United and Manchester City all the way down to non-League and semi-professional levels.
The problem, in the words of Dr James Malone, a senior lecturer in coaching science at Liverpool Hope University, is that it can be “terrible for your body”. It can cause mouth or throat cancer, just for starters, but there are also a number of other side effects.
In the United States, snus can be freely bought subject to age restrictions and in 2019, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) permitted the marketing of smokeless tobacco products as being less harmful than cigarettes.
Nicotine pouches are also increasingly prevalent among Major League Baseball baseball players, particularly in the wake of the governing body’s 2016 partial ban on chewing tobacco, a substance long synonymous with the sport.
It is illegal to sell snus in the UK and every European Union country bar Sweden, where it originates, and it has been that way since 1992. But it is legal to consume it. No doping rules are broken by footballers who use it. And so, a culture has developed whereby Johnson talks about snus being part of a “starter pack” for professional footballers, many of whom keep the old-fashioned tins in their wash bags.
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The Athletic is aware of one club where they tried to ban snus before realising that it was so rife there was little point trying to stop it. Players would openly get their “pots” out on the team bus on the way to matches, with an extra-strength one called Siberia a particular favourite. Coaches used to join in. In the end, a compromise was reached: the ban was lifted and the players were told it would be tolerated as long as they kept it out of the public eye.
“I can’t stand the stuff,” says one member of a club’s medical staff, speaking on condition of anonymity. “But other than warning them every year about the obvious health concerns from prolonged use, it’s a problem that’s not really fixable.”
Several players have agreed to speak about their use of snus, but only if their identities are kept secret. The reason, they explain, is that it could go down badly with current or future employers. Plus, they are acutely aware that a stigma has been attached to this subject since Jamie Vardy of Leicester City was photographed with a pack of snus on England duty and wrote in his 2016 autobiography that the public would be surprised by how common it was. Two years later, Vardy claimed he had stopped using snus following negative media coverage.
One former Premier League footballer — we will call him Player X — has told us he accepts he is addicted and that he worries about the health implications. He says he has never been warned against snus at any of his clubs and that at least five of his current team-mates are regular users.
“I first did it when I was 18,” says Player X, “and I was out in Manchester with some of the players I knew from England. We went to a nightclub and they said, ‘Get on these, lad’. I tried it and I just liked it. It chills you out, makes you relax.
“When you first try it, it gives you a bit of a head rush and you go a bit lightheaded. Especially if you’re out and having a drink, it gives you a nice little buzz. You’d hear stories about Jamie Vardy loving the snus. Initially, it was a thing people used to do to calm their nerves, especially players who get really anxious or nervous before games. But the more and longer you do it, you don’t really get an effect, and it becomes more of an addiction.”
Although snus is estimated to be 90 per cent less harmful than smoking, each pouch contains a substantially higher amount of nicotine than a cigarette. The product comes with a warning on the side that it can damage health and be addictive. Some clubs have imposed fines, usually ranging from £100 to £250, for anyone caught using it.
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“The number of times I say to myself that I don’t know why I do this anymore,” says Player X. “I want to stop, but then you try and fall off the wagon again because it becomes such a habit. It’s like smoking. People just crumble and end up smoking again. Obviously, though, it’s not good. You can get cancer. It can damage your gums. I heard it damages your circulation, too.”
Scientific research shows that heavy use can increase the risk of heart issues and diabetes, slow down recovery times for muscular injuries, reduce sleep quality, cause gum damage and dental issues and leave users more likely to suffer from mental health disorders. “Compared to cigarette smoking, the use of snus is probably less harmful,” Michael Steinberg, director of the tobacco-dependence programme at Rutgers University, New Jersey, has said in the past, quoted by medical websites. “But there is a big difference between ‘less harmful’ and safe.” The FDA’s 2019 judgment agreed with that assessment.
There is also an acceptance among various clubs, medical teams and authorities that, in the words of Player X, “it’s just everywhere”. As the popularity of snus has increased worldwide, it has become commonplace in all manner of sports and other walks of life. All sorts of variants are produced in the U.S. and other countries.
The nature of the football industry is also that younger players will follow the example of more established pros such as Marcus Rashford, the Manchester United striker who has been photographed on his Instagram account with what appears to be a tin of snus beside him (Rashford has declined to comment).
More and more clubs are seeing a rise in the number of academy players who are using snus daily, even while they are playing. At some EFL clubs, players have reported that the trend often starts via young Premier League players who join on loan.
Many are using nicotine pouches, which do not contain tobacco and are one of the more accessible alternatives rather than having to order snus from abroad. These pouches are sold in supermarkets and vape stores, costing as little as £5 for a pack of 20, in flavours such as lemon, mint, elderflower and mocha. To the dismay of health campaigners, a loophole in legislation means they can be sold to under-18s.
“These young lads are looking at, say, the top striker in the club, scoring goals, earning a load of money, coming in with a nice car,” says Johnson. “They see them as their idols. They look at what they’re doing, what they’re wearing, what they’re eating.
“They see them putting one, two, sometimes three of these little snus pouches up their top lip. Naturally, they’re thinking, ‘OK, that’s just what top footballers do’.”
The tricky part for Johnson has been working out what can be done about it. He has tried shock tactics — “I told them after one game, ‘Anyone who’s on snus is getting released in January’” — and in other moments, he has taken a more softly-softly approach, inviting doctors, physios and other medical experts to explain the risks. Various slides, on the theme of ‘You Snus, You Lose’, are shown to the players.
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“I sound like a nag but I care for them,” says Johnson. “I don’t want them suffering the side effects. It zones you out. It calms you down. This is why some players like it, when they have all the pressures of football. But then you see them taking three or four caffeine tablets, or caffeine chewing gum, to get themselves back ‘up’ before games. It’s crazy, there’s just no equilibrium.
“We had one player who came over for his medical. I asked him if he was on it. He promised he wasn’t. Then, within four weeks, I caught him with one up his top lip. ‘I’m sorry’, he said. ‘I just got sucked in by the boys’.
“Another of my players (at a former club) was so highly addicted that when he came round from having an operation in hospital he was climbing off the walls because he needed it that badly. He was desperate, begging the doctors to be allowed some. In the end, he forced his girlfriend to get it for him.
“The doctors were kicking off because they thought it might counter-balance the morphine they had given him. But once you start taking snus, it’s very hard to stop. A lot of players want to get off it, they just can’t.”
The most puzzling part is why a nicotine product has become so popular in an industry in which the top operators are usually so devoted to their fitness, what they put into their bodies, their sleep and recovery patterns and the importance of living the healthiest lifestyle.
So why would these ultra-fit athletes be so accepting of a product that is on World Anti-Doping Agency’s monitoring list and can lead to addiction, dependency and multiple health issues?
“It just doesn’t fit in with a picture of complete dedication to the sport,” says one club doctor. “But there is also a school of thought that these are young men who have been told what to eat and drink and how to behave all of their lives. If this is their one bit of rebellion, their attitude seems to be that it really isn’t that bad.”
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It’s true: there is plenty of evidence that the relevant players do not see ‘snuffing’ as a big deal. In the Nordic countries, for example, it has been ubiquitous for many years (even if the Finland hockey association called for a complete ban in 2015) and they are often bemused by the fuss it causes in the UK.
“I don’t see it as strange,” Emil Krafth, the Newcastle defender, told the Swedish newspaper Expressen in 2021. “I’m from Sweden and it’s so common there. Though I can understand the English, because they might not understand it as much.”
The attitude among many Swedes is summed up by one article in Cafe, a monthly magazine. “In the British tabloid press, there are disaster headlines and here in Sweden, we make fun of the Brits’ panic,” it reads. “There is a clear problem here: the English are simply not sufficiently educated in the art and tradition of snuffing.”
Victor Lindelof, Manchester United’s Swedish international defender, has posted photographs on his social-media accounts of his favourite snus.
Henrik Larsson quietly slipped a pouch into his mouth before scoring Sweden’s final kick in the penalty shootout that took them into the 1994 World Cup semi-finals at Romania’s expense — “just to calm myself down a little bit,” he said, almost two decades on — and Zlatan Ibrahimovic has been filmed inserting what appears to be the same. But who can be surprised? These are just three people in a country where more than 20 per cent of the male population are thought to be users.
“They all do it,” says Player X, recalling his experiences of playing for a team in Scandinavia. “Even the managers were doing it. I remember my manager doing the team talk and he just popped one in his mouth. It’s part of their culture.”
The biggest change, he says, is that there was once a time when players at English clubs had misgivings about doing it openly in the dressing room. Not any more. Player X describes the scene in one Premier League club’s dressing room recently. “I knew someone would do it — and they had loads. There were pots everywhere. They had rolls of them in the kit room.”
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Fair play to the relevant people, you might think, for managing to keep everything largely as an industry secret when, to quote one former League One player, some of the heavier users at his club “couldn’t go an hour without putting a new one in”. Apart from a brief burst of coverage in the Daily Mail and the Independent in 2018, it has never gained much traction in the media. It was only recently that the story emerged of Rod Thornley, then a masseur at Manchester United, becoming sick after some of the players put snus into his sandwich for a joke.
Yet there are all sorts of dressing-room tales to indicate that it is far more prevalent than the average football fan might realise.
One story is of the goalkeeper at a top-flight English club who used to keep a stash behind his goal to make sure he had a readymade supply during matches.
There is also the scene from All or Nothing, Amazon’s documentary series going behind the scenes with Manchester City, when it was noted by fans on social media that one of Pep Guardiola’s players had a tin beside him on the massage table.
“When I got to Newcastle there were already a lot of people snuffing,” said Krafth. “It’s not sold in shops in England, they buy online. Otherwise, I would have had to bring a whole suitcase from Sweden.”
At some clubs, the trade in snus sees it being sold between the players, with one usually volunteering to order in bulk on the internet and distribute it among team-mates. Various clubs in the Premier League have told The Athletic they discourage its use and that they give their players literature to that effect. No club, however, has been willing to go on the record, as if keen not to be associated with it. The Football Association’s position is that, while it cannot stop a player using from it, the England manager, Gareth Southgate, and his staff would counsel against it if the issue came up.
As for the PFA, this is the first time the players’ union has thought the issue to be of sufficient concern to warrant a public statement and programme of action.
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”Ensuring the health and well-being of our members is central to our work,” said a PFA spokesman. “As part of this remit, we maintain close relationships with club doctors and staff to monitor emerging health concerns for our players, such as the growing prevalence of snus use.”
The organisation intends to hold summer workshops before the 2023-24 season to outline the potential risks and try to shift the perception, as projected by many snus users, that it is nothing to be worried about.
“Though snus is not a banned substance, members will receive clear and accurate information to help them make informed decisions about their health,” said the PFA.
“We are also finalising plans to undertake research to address the knowledge gap regarding snus use among football players. This three-stage approach will review existing literature, gather first-hand accounts from players and quantify snus use among academy and senior players. This research will inform long-term targeted initiatives to protect player health and performance.”
(Top photo: Getty Images and iStock; design: Eamonn Dalton)
