It's Naive To Assume That Football Doesn't Have A Doping Problem

It's Naive To Assume That Football Doesn't Have A Doping Problem
18:24, 27 Jan 2018

There’s a sense that, almost uniquely for a major sport, football doesn’t have a doping problem. Unlike tennis, athletics, cycling and baseball, amongst others, which have all experienced damaging scandals in recent times, many are comforted that this isn’t the case when it comes to the world’s most popular participation sport. But just because it hasn’t been discovered, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.

The news that, when asked by anti-doping officials, neither Manchester United nor Arsenal could account for Alexis Sanchez’s whereabouts on the day of his long-awaited move between the two clubs, was largely overlooked. For those who chose to engage with the story, there was supposedly no real issue to address. A simple administrative error. It’s this willingness to treat relatively minor infractions as irrelevant that enables bigger problems to remain hidden from sight.

This isn’t to say that Sanchez is doping, but to question the ease with which that possibility was brushed under the carpet. As far as most are concerned, despite the massive financial and competitive incentives to dope, it just doesn’t happen in football. Arsene Wenger was quick to excuse both player and club. In his press conference yesterday, the Arsenal manager said, “Overall he has been tested so many times here that it is no worry for me that he has any doping problem. It’s just a bad day for him to be tested.”

We shouldn’t allow these things to be given a free pass, but football as a whole seems to content to do so. Last year, Bournemouth and Manchester City were fined just £35,000 by the Football Association for failing to ensure anti-doping officials knew where players were for drugs testing. Considering the money that Premier League clubs have to play with, this barely constitutes a slap on the wrist. If there was something to hide, that’s practically an open invitation to do so.

Such a sanction won’t even be noticed by top clubs, and beyond the day itself, it barely was by the media either. Many are unwilling to acknowledge the possibility that doping exists in football, and that’s part of the problem. A healthy scepticism of clubs, coaches, managers, players – and their motivations – is vital if we want a clean sport. Right now, we’re far too willing to simply believe that this is the case without asking any hard questions. It’s almost as if we don’t want to look for fear of what we might find.

It’s not as if there haven’t been warning signs and instances worth exploring before. As part of Operation Puerto, a Spanish police investigation into the doping network of a leading sports doctor, Eufemiano Fuentes, hundreds of blood bags were found. Although the primary focus was on Fuentes’ work with cyclists, he admitted to also assisting major figures in football, boxing, tennis and athletics. No names were ever revealed, but Real Sociedad and Real Madrid both had to address the issue of payments made to him.

It may very well be a coincidence that Barcelona and the Spanish national team were dominating club and international football to a remarkable degree during this period, but few seemed to want to raise the possibility that there could be a link. Although there is no proof, Fuentes himself said in an interview with a Spanish radio station that “If I talk Spain would be stripped of the World Cup and European Championship.” It seems we’ll never know. If nothing else, it creates uncertainty where there should be none.

Moving onto more recent matters, the ease with which Arsene Wenger felt able to wave away what happened with Sanchez was particularly odd. The Arsenal manager has previously been one of very few high profile figures within football to suggest that something might be amiss. In 2013 he called for the introduction of blood tests for players, in addition to urine ones, and claimed that “Sport is full of legends who are in fact cheats.”

Wenger was speaking on the back of the Lance Armstrong revelations and alluded to a complacency amongst the football authorities that all was fine. "Honestly, I don't think we do enough,” he said. “Because it is very difficult for me to believe that you have 740 players in the World Cup and you come out with zero problems. Mathematically that happens every time. But statistically, even for social drugs, it looks like testing would have to be better and go deeper.”

That was five years ago and progress, if any, has been minimal. There’s undoubtedly far more that needs to be done. Greater vigilance is needed. Football is now a much bigger and more serious financial concern than ever before. Due to modern methods, improved diet and fitness regimes, top level games are now played at a pace and intensity that would have been unimaginable a couple of decades ago. Hard as it may be to accept the possibility, if something looks too good to be true, sometimes it is.

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