Creatine has one of the better résumés in sports nutrition.

More strength?

Check.

More power?

Often.

Better performance during repeated high-intensity exercise?

That’s basically its LinkedIn headline.

So you’d think the question of whether soccer players should use creatine would have a pretty straightforward answer.

Soccer involves sprinting. Creatine helps high-intensity exercise. Everybody shake hands and go home.

Except a large systematic review of creatine specifically in soccer players found something considerably messier.

Across 45 reports representing 41 unique studies, researchers found some promising benefits for things like repeated sprints, anaerobic power, and strength.

But plenty of studies found little or nothing.

Endurance didn’t appear to improve.

Jump performance was inconsistent.

Recovery benefits were unclear.

Technical skills were all over the place.

And one of the most consistent findings?

The scale sometimes went up.

Welcome to sports science, where the answer is once again:

It depends.

First: Why Creatine Makes So Much Sense for Soccer

Creatine is a naturally occurring compound that helps your muscles rapidly regenerate ATP.

ATP is basically your cells’ immediate energy currency.

Every time you sprint, jump, accelerate, tackle, or make an explosive movement, your muscles start spending ATP.

Unfortunately, they don’t carry around an unlimited checking account.

For very short, high-intensity efforts, your muscles rely heavily on the phosphocreatine system to regenerate ATP quickly.

Creatine supplementation can increase the amount of creatine and phosphocreatine stored in muscle.

More phosphocreatine theoretically means a greater ability to rapidly replenish ATP during repeated bursts of intense exercise.

And if you’ve ever watched soccer, you can probably see why researchers got excited.

A Soccer Match Is Basically 90 Minutes of “Surprise, Sprint Again”

Soccer isn’t a steady jog.

A player might cover more than 10 kilometers during a match while repeatedly switching between lower-intensity movement and explosive activity.

According to the review, match analyses suggest players may perform roughly 30–50 high-intensity sprints per match, sometimes reaching speeds above 30 km/h.

Then add:

Accelerations.

Decelerations.

Changes of direction.

Jumps.

Kicks.

Tackles.

And approximately 90 minutes of wondering why you chose a sport with such a large field.

On paper, that’s exactly the kind of repeated high-intensity activity where creatine should shine.

But soccer doesn’t happen on paper.

Researchers Looked at 41 Studies

This systematic review searched research databases through May 2025 and ultimately included 41 unique controlled studies represented by 45 reports.

Participants ranged from adolescents to professional adults and included different competitive levels.

Most were male.

Supplementation protocols were also very different.

Some studies used short loading phases, often around:

20 grams per day

or

0.3 grams per kilogram per day

for roughly 4–7 days.

Longer studies generally used around 3–10 grams per day, with interventions lasting as long as 28 weeks.

Most studies used creatine monohydrate.

Researchers then looked across three broad areas:

Performance. Body composition. Recovery and fatigue.

And that’s where the simple creatine story started getting complicated.

Did Creatine Make Players Faster?

Sometimes.

Which is possibly the least satisfying answer in science.

Some studies reported improvements in selected sprint or repeated-sprint outcomes.

Others didn’t.

For example, one study found better sprint-power performance after supplementation.

Another longer trial reported faster repeated-sprint times.

Several additional studies reported favorable results on particular sprint outcomes.

Sounds good.

But other trials found no significant benefit.

One study using 24 grams per day for six days found no improvement across 30 maximal 20-meter sprints.

Another five-day loading study found no improvement compared with placebo.

Several others also failed to demonstrate an ergogenic sprint effect.

There’s another important wrinkle.

Some studies reported that participants improved after taking creatine—but didn’t clearly show that they improved more than the control group.

That’s a big distinction.

Imagine:

Creatine group before training: 10
Creatine group after training: 12

Great.

But if the placebo group also went from 10 to 12?

Creatine doesn’t get to take the victory lap.

The review specifically separated these within-group improvements from convincing between-group treatment effects.

That’s good science.

And considerably less exciting supplement marketing.

What About Explosive Power?

Again:

Promising, but inconsistent.

Some studies found favorable effects on measures of anaerobic power, including certain Wingate-test outcomes.

Others found improvements within the creatine group without demonstrating a statistically significant advantage over placebo.

Overall, the review concluded that anaerobic power was one of the areas where creatine showed some favorable findings, but the evidence wasn’t consistent enough for firm soccer-specific conclusions.

This makes physiological sense.

Creatine’s strongest established mechanism involves rapid ATP regeneration during high-intensity exercise.

But having a mechanism that should help doesn’t guarantee a measurable improvement in every real-world performance test.

Biology loves ruining a perfectly good theory.

Surely It Helps Players Jump Higher?

You know the answer by now.

Sometimes.

Some studies reported improved vertical-jump performance.

Others didn’t.

Several studies showed no significant between-group benefit even when the creatine group itself improved.

The review ultimately characterized jump findings as mixed.

So:

Creatine → explosive energy system.

Explosive energy system → jumping.

Therefore creatine → definitely jumping higher?

Nice equation.

The actual studies didn’t cooperate.

Change of Direction?

Not much happened here either.

Only a small number of studies looked specifically at change-of-direction performance.

The results were generally null or inconsistent.

That matters because changing direction isn’t simply about producing raw power.

It requires braking, coordination, technique, body positioning, reacceleration, and probably several other things your knees would like you to stop doing.

Creatine can influence muscle energetics.

It doesn’t automatically make every complex athletic movement better.

Strength Had a Better Case

Muscular strength produced some of the more encouraging findings.

One study found greater improvements in bench press and full-squat strength with creatine compared with placebo.

Another reported greater leg-strength improvement.

Other studies, however, didn’t show benefits.

So even here, the evidence wasn’t completely consistent.

But this is one area where the findings at least line up reasonably well with the broader creatine literature.

Creatine + resistance training has a much stronger scientific foundation than:

Creatine + soccer = instant Champions League contract.

Does Creatine Make You Better at Soccer Skills?

This might be the most interesting question.

Because nobody wins a soccer match by having an impressive phosphocreatine concentration.

Eventually you have to do something with the ball.

Researchers looked at skills including:

kicking, shooting, ball speed, and dribbling.

One study found no improvement in kicking accuracy.

Another found that creatine users maintained kicking speed better.

Another found no significant improvement in shooting accuracy.

Some studies reported improved dribbling performance.

Others weren’t statistically convincing enough to establish a clear treatment effect.

Overall:

Mixed.

Creatine may help the machinery powering the athlete.

That doesn’t necessarily improve the software controlling the ball.

What About Endurance?

Here’s where the answer gets cleaner.

Across the studies examining intermittent high-intensity endurance, creatine didn’t improve endurance performance.

Trials using treadmill testing and intermittent endurance protocols generally found no significant benefit.

And that’s not particularly shocking.

Creatine isn’t primarily an aerobic endurance supplement.

Its strongest rationale involves repeated high-intensity efforts.

A soccer player needs both systems.

You need enough aerobic capacity to keep moving for 90 minutes.

Then you need enough explosive capacity to sprint when the ball suddenly appears 30 meters away and everyone starts panicking.

Creatine is much more relevant to the second problem than the first.

“Okay, But Creatine Helps Recovery… Right?”

Maybe.

But the soccer-specific evidence wasn’t particularly convincing.

Researchers looked at all kinds of recovery and fatigue measurements:

• blood lactate
• fatigue indices
• heart rate
• perceived exertion
• creatine kinase
• inflammatory markers
• lactate dehydrogenase
• oxidative-stress markers

Some individual studies reported favorable findings.

For example, one trial found smaller increases in certain inflammatory markers following exercise.

Another reported an effect on lactate dehydrogenase.

But other studies found nothing.

Fatigue-index findings were inconclusive.

Blood lactate findings varied.

Heart-rate findings were mostly null.

And all five studies assessing perceived exertion found no significant effect.

So the review does not support saying:

Creatine helps soccer players recover faster between matches.

That’s plausible enough to study.

It just hasn’t been established by this evidence.

The Most Consistent Effect May Be the One You See on the Scale

Here’s something that showed up repeatedly:

Body mass often increased.

Of the 23 studies that measured body composition, 16 reported increased body mass within the creatine condition.

Reported increases ranged from about:

0.4 kg to 3.6 kg

although not every study established that the change was significantly different from its control group.

Weight increases were particularly common with loading protocols.

Some of that can relate to creatine’s effects on water within muscle.

And over longer periods, creatine combined with resistance training can support gains in lean tissue.

But here’s the soccer-specific question:

Is extra body mass good?

For a strength athlete?

Potentially useful.

For a soccer player repeatedly accelerating, sprinting, stopping, and changing direction for 90 minutes?

That’s more complicated.

An extra kilogram isn’t automatically bad.

But you’re carrying it every time you move across the field.

The review couldn’t determine whether creatine-related weight changes ultimately helped or hurt sprinting, endurance, or change-of-direction performance.

That’s actually one of the most practically interesting unanswered questions.

But Doesn’t Everyone Already Know Creatine Works?

Here’s where context matters.

Creatine is one of the most extensively researched sports supplements.

There’s substantial broader evidence supporting its ability to improve things like strength, power, and adaptations to resistance training.

But this review asked a narrower question:

What does the evidence specifically show in soccer players?

That’s not exactly the same thing.

Soccer is a complicated cocktail of:

aerobic endurance + repeated sprints + explosive power + skill + tactical decision-making + recovery

A supplement might improve one ingredient without noticeably changing the final drink.

The authors put it nicely in scientific language:

It’s unlikely that one supplement will improve every component of soccer performance.

Or in less scientific language:

Creatine can help your energy system without teaching you how to bend a free kick around a wall.

Here’s the Biggest Problem With the Evidence

The researchers rated the certainty of evidence very low across all three major areas:

Performance.

Body composition.

Recovery and fatigue.

Why?

A bunch of reasons.

Studies used different doses.

Different supplementation durations.

Different ages.

Different competitive levels.

Different tests.

Many had small samples.

Diet and training load weren’t consistently controlled.

Some studies weren’t randomized.

And among 28 randomized parallel-group studies, 14 were judged to have a high overall risk of bias.

All 11 nonrandomized or allocation-unverifiable controlled studies were judged to have a serious overall risk of bias.

Researchers also didn’t perform a traditional meta-analysis because the studies were simply too different from one another for the authors to consider pooling them appropriate.

That’s important.

This wasn’t:

41 studies prove creatine works.

It was:

41 studies collectively give us a pretty messy picture.

Women Are Also Seriously Underrepresented

Another problem?

Most participants were male.

Only a limited number of studies involved female soccer players.

That means researchers couldn’t confidently determine whether creatine’s effects differ between male and female players.

Considering how much women’s soccer has grown globally, that’s a fairly obvious research gap.

Science has homework.

So Should Soccer Players Take Creatine?

The review can’t give us a universal yes or no.

Its conclusion is more nuanced.

Creatine may be worth considering for specific performance goals, particularly given its broader evidence base and biological rationale for repeated high-intensity exercise.

But based on soccer-specific research, we can’t confidently say it will:

make every player faster,

improve match endurance,

improve technical ability,

accelerate between-match recovery,

or improve overall match performance.

The researchers also couldn’t establish an optimal soccer-specific:

dose, loading strategy, timing, season phase, or protocol.

That’s not the same thing as saying creatine doesn’t work.

It means:

We know considerably more about creatine than we know about creatine specifically for soccer.

There’s a difference.

The Bottom Line

Creatine has a compelling reason to work in soccer.

Soccer repeatedly demands short bursts of explosive activity, and creatine helps replenish ATP through the phosphocreatine system.

And across 41 unique studies, some trials did report improvements in repeated sprints, anaerobic power, and muscular strength.

But those benefits weren’t consistent.

Jump performance was mixed.

Change-of-direction performance didn’t show a clear benefit.

Endurance didn’t improve.

Technical-skill findings were inconsistent.

Recovery markers were mostly mixed or inconclusive.

And body weight frequently increased, particularly with loading protocols.

Most importantly, the researchers rated the overall certainty of the evidence very low.

So creatine hasn’t suddenly stopped being one of the best-studied supplements in sports nutrition.

The lesson is more interesting than that.

A supplement can have a well-established biological effect without guaranteeing better performance in every sport.

Soccer isn’t one physical task.

It’s dozens of them happening simultaneously for 90 minutes.

Creatine may improve some pieces of that puzzle.

We just don’t have convincing evidence that it completes the whole picture.

And unfortunately…

there is still no supplement for missing an open goal.

_{Ashtary-Larky D, Candow DG, Antonio J, Quiceno C, Angelini F, Forbes SC, Moradi S, Kazeminasab F, Bagheri R. Creatine supplementation in soccer players: a systematic review. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2026 Dec 31;23(sup1):2735569. doi: 10.1080/15502783.2026.2735569. Epub 2026 Oct 2. PMID: 42826085.}