The 1,000-Euro Croquette and the Snus Governance Gap in Professional Football

On December 21, 2026, at De Kuip, Feyenoord hosted Heracles Almelo in a Dutch cup tie. Television cameras zoomed in on the home team's substitutes' bench during the half-time interval. Michiel Kramer, the 28-year-old striker left on the bench that day, held a fried croquette in his hand and ate it right in front of the lens. There was no refereeing controversy. No VAR. Just a professional footballer eating a snack during the half-time break of a professional match. A few days later, technical director Martin van Geel announced an internal fine: 1,000 euros. Kramer was fined for eating during the interval, where nutrition is treated as part of match performance. Eight years later, Kramer sat in the guest chair of "Vandaag Inside" and recounted the old story. He admitted the fine, admitted "we were messing about a bit in the kit room." But the real highlight of the broadcast came later, when presenter Wilfred Genee asked about other habits. Kramer replied: "All footballers use that!" "That" is snus. This is the point where the story shifts from a humorous anecdote into a governance issue. And that is the part worth analysing. Snus is a smokeless nicotine product, usually placed under the upper lip. It originates from Sweden, where it has been legalised and widely used for decades. Unlike cigarettes, snus does not go through combustion, so it is considered less harmful to the respiratory tract. But nicotine is still nicotine - a highly addictive substance with a direct effect on the central nervous system. In professional football, snus is not a banned substance. This is where I need to stop and run a three-step check, because there is a large gap between "not banned" and "not monitored". The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) maintains two separate instruments. The first is the Prohibited List - substances athletes are not allowed to use, with sanctions attached. The second is the Monitoring Program - substances not yet banned but tracked to detect usage patterns and assess risk. Nicotine sits in the second category. Nicotine has been on WADA's Monitoring Program since 2026. This means athletes who use snus will not face doping sanctions. But WADA is still recording data on them. This is a legal structure I often call "the grey zone with cameras." You are not punished, but you are being watched. I recall the lesson of 2026, when I mis-explained IFAB's temporary substitution rule and had to spend two weeks rewriting the process table. The lesson of 2026: never explain a rule without the document in front of you. So before writing anything about snus and doping law, I reopened the current Prohibited List. Nicotine is not on it. It is only in the Monitoring Program. This distinction matters more than it appears. A substance in the Monitoring Program can be moved to the Prohibited List if data shows a concerning usage pattern. That creates a latent risk that clubs may not have prepared for. To understand why Kramer could say that on national television without triggering a media crisis, the remark needs to be placed in a specific cultural context. Dutch football has a very particular food tradition. Croquettes, frikandellen, and fried snacks are part of the stadium and dressing-room culture. In the match of December 21, 2026, Feyenoord's half-time area had croquettes, frikandellen, and "healthy options" too. The coexistence of these two food groups says a lot about the transitional phase of Dutch sports nutrition: clubs had begun modernising but had not fully eliminated the traditional snack culture. Snus is the same. In Sweden and the Benelux countries, snus is normalised to a far greater degree than in the rest of Europe. Its appearance in the dressing room of a Dutch club is not a cultural oddity. It is a regional reality. But this is precisely where cultural analysis must give way to governance analysis. A culturally normalised habit does not automatically become a properly managed habit. And that is where the story becomes interesting. This is the central finding of the whole story, and it is not about snus. It is about the asymmetry between two behaviours. Feyenoord, in 2026, fined a player 1,000 euros for eating a croquette during the interval. This behaviour had three features: it was visible (caught on camera), it was medically harmless at the level of a single instance, and it could damage the club's image. The fine was issued quickly, by the technical director, who held disciplinary authority. According to Kramer, that same club, that same dressing room, tolerated a near-universal nicotine habit. This habit had three opposite features: it was hard to see (placed under the lip, invisible to cameras), it was harmful to health when used regularly, and it did not damage the club's image because nobody saw it. The disciplinary model here is not based on the degree of harm. It is based on the degree of visibility. This is a model I have encountered many times in sports-regulation analysis. Clubs routinely react to what creates media risk, not to what creates health risk. A croquette on television is a media problem. A nicotine habit in the dressing room is a health problem. The club addressed the first and ignored the second. I do not say this to criticise Feyenoord specifically. I say this to point out a general pattern in sports governance: discipline based more on image than on welfare. And when a player like Kramer recognises this asymmetry, he speaks it out on television. That is why the story becomes notable. It is not just a confession about snus. It is an observation about unfairness in the disciplinary system. Let us convert everything into numbers to see it more clearly. A 1,000-euro fine equals a single training session for an academy youth player, or a dinner for four in Amsterdam. For a Feyenoord first-team player in 2026, this was a financially immaterial sum. But it was not designed to cause financial loss. It was designed to create a precedent. A precedent for what? For the fact that a club can and will intervene in a player's dietary behaviour, even during the half-time break. Now compare that with the nicotine habit. If Kramer is right that "all footballers use it," we are talking about a daily habit, not a single event. A daily habit has a cumulative effect on cardiovascular health, sleep, and post-training recovery - three factors that directly affect performance. Yet no fine was ever announced for this habit. The numerical asymmetry here is stark: 1,000 euros for a visible event, 0 euros for an invisible habit. This is not an argument that Feyenoord should have fined players for using snus. It is an argument that the disciplinary system is measuring the wrong target. It measures the capacity to attract attention, not the capacity to cause harm. There is one more point to check. Kramer says snus makes you "very calm." This is a real pharmacological effect of nicotine on the central nervous system. It suggests that some players may use snus not merely out of habit, but for a perceived psychological benefit - reduced anxiety, increased focus. If so, then snus is operating as an unofficial, unmanaged psychological aid, monitored by no medical department. This brings us to a question of player welfare. A club has its own doctor, medical staff, and a nutrition programme. But if an addictive substance is used widely without anyone intervening, there is a gap between the declared medical structure and the dressing-room reality. Feyenoord in 2026 had club doctor Casper van Eijck, who travelled from hospital to all home matches. This is a sign of a top club with serious medical infrastructure. Yet according to Kramer, a widespread nicotine habit still existed in the dressing room. I do not conclude that the medical staff knew and stayed silent. I only point out that there is a gap between the presence of a medical structure and the enforcement of welfare policy on addictive substances. The structure exists. The policy may not. This is where I need to apply my precedent-tracing rule. When I hear a controversial claim, I do not react immediately. I look for precedent. Is there precedent for nicotine being handled in professional sport? The answer is yes, but not in the form of sanctions. In several sports, nicotine has been considered for its stimulant and anxiety-reducing effects. Some studies on athletes suggest nicotine use can improve focus in high-pressure situations. This is why WADA does not ignore it entirely, but places it on the Monitoring Program. So what does the precedent show? It shows that the global regulator has recognised nicotine as a substance to track, but lacks enough data to decide on a ban. This is a deliberate state of waiting. And this waiting state creates a gap that clubs must fill themselves - or not. Let us consider three scenarios with the highest probability. Scenario one: the status quo. Nicotine stays on the Monitoring Program. Snus continues to be tolerated in dressing rooms. Clubs continue to have no specific nicotine policy. This is the most probable scenario in the short term, because it demands the least action from all parties. Scenario two: welfare education. After Kramer's story spreads, some clubs or the Dutch players' union may add nicotine to welfare education programmes. This is a light, non-punitive response, and may occur if there is enough media pressure. Scenario three: reclassification. WADA decides to move nicotine from the Monitoring Program to the Prohibited List. This is the least likely scenario in the short term, but has the largest impact. If it happens, thousands of snus users would face retroactive compliance risk. Of these three scenarios, the third is the one no club is prepared for. And that is the most concerning from a governance standpoint. I do not write this to cause panic. I write this to point out that a habit considered harmless today can become a compliance problem tomorrow. This is the nature of risk governance in sport: what is not banned today can be banned tomorrow. The pandemic did not bring football to the brink; it brought our gaps into the light. Kramer's snus story works in the same way. It does not create the nicotine problem in football. The problem already existed. It simply made the problem visible. Now comes the part where I want to challenge the popular reading of this story. The popular reading is: "A former player reveals that all footballers use snus." Goal.com's headline placed the line "All footballers use that!" at the centre, as if this were an industry-wide discovery. But read it again carefully. Kramer is talking about his dressing room. He says "all footballers" in the context of a talk-show conversation. This is an anecdotal claim, not a data-driven finding. No study is cited. No league-wide usage rate. No confirmation from other players. We have a single source, and by my rule, a single source is not enough to conclude. Data is never lacking in football. What is lacking is the habit of asking: where does this data come from? In this case, the data comes from a television conversation, where exaggeration is part of the format. And here is the counter-intuitive point. This story is not a scandal. It is a media product designed to create a viral moment. "Vandaag Inside" and "In de Wandelgangen" are talk shows that reward provocative statements. Kramer, as a former player building a post-career media brand, has an incentive to create such moments. The claim "all footballers use it" serves both purposes: it shocks, and it positions him as someone willing to speak the truth. I am not saying Kramer is lying. I am saying we need to distinguish between a testimony and a finding. A testimony has value as a signal. A finding has value as evidence. This story provides a signal, not evidence. But this is precisely where I want to go further. Even if Kramer's claim is exaggerated, it still reveals something important about dressing-room culture. A former player felt comfortable talking about snus on national television, years after retirement. This suggests the habit was never treated as a disciplinary secret. It was treated as normal. And this normalisation is the problem. Not the number of players using it, but the absence of any discussion about it. One more thing to consider: the media format. The story was published in English by an aggregating outlet, based on a Dutch-language talk-show clip. This process of translation and aggregation tends to amplify the sensationalism of the original context. In Dutch, it may have been a light story. In English, it becomes a shocking headline. People look at the date of signing; I look at the date the agent goes silent. In this case, people look at the sensational quote; I look at the policy gap it exposes. So what should we take from this story? I think this story matters for a specific reason: it exposes a gap between three management systems - global doping regulation, club welfare policy, and dressing-room cultural reality. WADA monitors nicotine but does not ban it. Clubs have medical structures but no clear policy on addictive substances. Players use snus as a normal part of professional life. These three systems do not communicate with each other. This gap is not a Feyenoord problem. It is a problem of the entire professional football system. And this gap will only become more important if WADA changes its position on nicotine. If that happens, clubs will face a question they have never prepared for: how to manage a widespread habit that suddenly becomes a violation? This is why I track stories like this. Not because they are shocking, but because they reveal gaps in the governance system. A croquette on television is an anecdote. But the question of who manages nicotine in the dressing room is a question of governance. And that question still has no answer. There is one thing I have learned after years of working with sports regulations: habits tolerated today often become issues managed tomorrow. Snus may be in its tolerated phase. But the history of substances in sport shows that the tolerated phase does not last forever. What is striking is that clubs appear unprepared for this change. They do not track usage patterns. They do not add nicotine to welfare education. They do not discuss it publicly. And when a former player like Kramer says what everyone in the dressing room knows, the system's response is silence. This silence is what I want readers to notice. Not the sensational claim, but the silence around it. Because the silence of the governance system is often where the real problems live. One wrong name does not collapse football. But it collapses trust in the writer. In this case, one anecdotal claim does not collapse football. But it should make us question the gaps in the system that manages substances in sport. And that is the question I want to leave behind: if a substance is used widely in the dressing room but appears in no policy, who is actually managing it?