Mexico’s Soccer Coach Tells Players: No Sex Before World Cup

Mexico coach Miguel Herrera is hoping his players exercise a little restraint during their time in Brazil. “If a player can’t go one month or 20 days without having sexual relations, then they are not prepared to be a professional player,” he told Mexican newspaper Reforma.

Mexico’s soccer team coach may have made heads spin when he said he wanted players to avoid having sex at next month’s World Cup in Brazil.

But to coach Miguel “El Piojo” Herrera it made perfect, if not totally scientific, sense: Abstinence will make his men maximize their performance on the field.

His statement actually echoes a debate that’s been bashed around since soccer’s first World Cup in 1930 — and even as far back as the Ancient Olympics.

The Greeks, like Mexican coach Herrera, saw sperm as a source of masculinity and strength that sportsmen needed.

Since then, athletes, coaches, and sports scientists have all waded in on how action under the sheets should be balanced with action in the penalty area.

Herrera said Wednesday that he wasn’t placing an outright ban on the Mexican team’s bedtime practices, but rather encouraging them to keep their pants on.

“I am thinking about soccer and I hope that the boys are thinking about soccer because nobody has died from practicing abstinence for 40 days,” he said.

In the last World Cup in 2010 in South Africa, several coaches also tried to keep their player’s eyes off the opposite sex — with mixed results.

Ghana’s team was banned from scoring between the sheets and waged an admirable campaign on the field, knocking out the United States, before being controversially eliminated by Uruguay.

However, England’s players were also reportedly kept away from their wives and girlfriends and played a disappointing tournament, with the goalkeeper dropping the ball in his own net in the first game.

Click here to read more

Source: NBC News | IOAN GRILLO, GLOBALPOST