The relationship between sex and athletic performance has been debated for centuries, and now, the owner of Bucharest’s football club, FCSB, has also stated his opinion on the topic.
Gigi Becali said in an interview on Pro X television that CFR Cluj (CFR 1907 Kolozsvár in Hungarian) won the regular season of the Romanian first league easily because their players only have sex once per week.
“CFR players have sex only once per week because Dan Petrescu tires them out during their trainings!” Becali then went on to assume that Florinel Coman (FCSB player) would perform better on the field if he had more rest but doesn’t because “he goes to fornicate and is then weak in the knees,” said Becali explaining his theory.
The Bucharest club owner came to this conclusion after analyzing how much the players are running during the matches. “CFR players are running continuously on the field. It shows that they fornicate less often,” he said.
But what does the science say?
So this is the opinion of the owner of the Bucharest club which finished the regular season in fourth place in the Romanian first league. But what does the science says about the relationship between sex and performance in sports?
Although there have been clinical studies that have attempted to find the answer, the results don’t point strongly one way or the other. One study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, for example, concluded that “sex had no statistically significant effect on athletic performance,” and others have produced the same results. In other words, we can assume it doesn’t harm performance, but you’re most likely not going to benefit either.
CFR’s performance
CFR won the regular season of the Romanian first league with 52 points, before Universitatea Craiova (46 points), FC Botoşani (45 points) and FCSB (44 points), and the play-offs start this weekend. Moreover, the Transylvanian team is also still involved in the knockout phase of the Europa League and is going to play its rematch against Sevilla on Thursday after last week’s draw with the Spanish team in Kolozsvár/Cluj-Napoca.
Title image: FCSB owner Gigi Becali (Photo: prosport.ro)
