Card games on the team bus have been linked to poor performance on the pitch, according to experts.

Poker and top level football once again have a strong link this week, as the British Sociological Association’s annual conference in Birmingham, United Kingdom, is set to reveal today.

According to the Independent, poker games on the team bus on the way to matches, and in hotel rooms, are causing top flight footballers to under perform in the English Premier League.

The infamous high stakes games on the team bus have always been part of British football lore, and players such as Robbie Blake, Michael Owen, Dieter Hamann and well known poker fan Teddy Sheringham had been known to participate.

Boredom an issue in the Premier League

Neymar and Ronaldo

34 Footballers in anonymous discussions said they would play poker to relieve boredom on the way to football matches, and if they lost those matches they would play badly on the way back.

“Players gamble as a way of relieving the boredom on journeys to away games and after training on pre-season tours,” said Graeme Law of the University of Chester. “Contrary to popular opinion, their actions are heavily regulated and constrained, so they get easily bored.”

The annual conference today will also discuss how footballers are twice as likely to develop gambling addiction problems, in part due to the ease of mobile betting.

This is not the first time poker has gotten footballers into trouble, and just last month German player Max Kruse landed in hot water with both his club and National team because of his love of the game.

In other circles the relationship between poker and football has been very positive. Most notably the ongoing sponsorships of elite players Neymar and Cristiano Ronaldo by PokerStars.

Barry Carter Barry Carter is the editor of PokerStrategy.com and the co-author of The Mental Game of Poker 1 & 2. Twitter

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