Regarding drugs, it's hard to say... I'm sure players using performance enhancing drugs in the smaller leagues are exceptions and individuals. I've been working part-time for 12 years for a professional team and there is absolutely nothing there.

On the higher level however there have been reports, as mentioned by another poster. Operacion Puerto had evidence of Real, Barcelona, Rafael Nadal and Fernando Alonso being customers at blood doping specialist Dr. Fuentes. All these accusations went magically away.

The reason Armstrong went clean for that amount of time is because he was the cyclist with the most money, being able to fund his cover. And that's a fraction of the amount of money that goes on in football.

The strange thing about football is the fact that technical ability wins over physical. So there's no reason that huge teams automatically have better conditioning than small teams. But when you look at a couple of teams you really can question how they are so much better regarding fitness than others, even though there is no record of them doing extraordinary training in the pre season.

There's a reason why Felix Magath has a bad name among players, it's because he has a brutal training regime. Those teams you can expect to outcondition other team. So you have to question teams who do all on ball training in the pre season, who do commercial trips rather than train hard.

Teams and players playing 60 games a season looking fresher than players playing 40 games in smaller leagues with a slower pace to the game is absolutely something to question.

I believe it's a problem, and a huge problem at the top of the pyramid, but it hasn't gone down to the smaller teams (yet).