POSTED: February 6th 2009
InDepth
Dithering over the dope code
KEIR RADNEDGE / Sports Features Communications
LONDON: The world of sport in general, football in particular, and the fight to combat dope cheats tastes of what the English call an “alphabet soup.” It’s about WADA and FIFA and CAS (also known as TAS) and now FIGC and CONI and FIFpro have joined in.*
That is even before any observer or director or official or footballer gets as far as considering the abbreviations for various “naughty” pharmaceutical concoctions such as, for example . . . THG (a banned steroid, tetrahydrogestrinone, known as The Clear because it was, for a long time, undetectable).
Football’s doping history is long and complex but not as dangerously damaging as in – for example - athletics, cycling, weightlifting and swimming.
Just, however, when it appeared that the game had finally accepted the mainstream rules which govern other Olympic sports – i.e. founded on a two-year ban as basic punishment for a doping offence – further controversy has muddied the waters.
Italian footballers Daniele Mannini (now with Napoli) and Davide Possanzini were the subject of disciplinary action for not undergoing dope tests after playing for Brescia in a Serie B [second division] game against Chievo Verona in December 2007.
Cleared then banned
Both were cleared of any offence by the Italian federation but, on an appeal, they were then banned for 15 days last March by the Italian Olympic committee. This decision was then challenged by WADA in front of CAS. WADA wanted the two-year ban applied but the CAS banned the players for one year each up until January 14, 2010.
The CAS panel of three lawyers ruled that the players' had contravened the WADA code, that CONI had applied the wrong punishment but that the players were entitled to a finding of 'no significant fault.'"
Now FIGC and CONI, with the support of FIFA, is asking WADA – on the basis of new evidence – to go back to TAS and ask for the players’ punishment to be cancelled on the basis of new evidence.
Giancarlo Abete, president of the Italian federation, says: “It is now clear that they missed the test totally through a misunderstanding and even WADA must acknowledge that this does not deserve such a heavy punishment.”
The Italian case might not deserve so much publicity were it not for the fact that football at league level – if not at FIFA level – is becoming more and more concerned about the level of dope-test intrusion in players’ private lives.
Premier concerns
Last autumn the English players’ union expressed its opposition to plans to establish a list of leading Premier League players who should be subject to the “whereabouts” regulation. This demand that leading designated players/athletes keep dope-test teams fully informed of their daily location up to three months in advance so as to be available for random testing.
Three missed tests or three warnings for failing to file such information within an 18-month period constitute a doping violation and can lead to a ban.
This system has become commonplace in track and field sports but is causing unrest within football. The reasons are plain: the Football Association in England has only ever had to deal with two positive cases of a performance-enhancing drug but each year handles between eight to 12 cases of recreational drug use such as cannabis, amphetamines and cocaine.
Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association [the players’ union], says: “We feel that to invade the privacy of a player’s home would be a step too far. We appreciate that football is a major spectator sport and wish to co-operate but football should not be treated in the same way as the individual sports that have a problem with drugs.
“If we complain about anything to do with drug testing, people think we might have something to hide but football’s record is extremely good and there has been a virtual absence of performance-enhancing drugs for decades. In any case, for most of the year, the whereabouts of players is always known — either at their training ground or matches.”
Personal information
Two months later various French sports bodies raised objections to the new WADA code because it demanded, they claimed, too much unnecessary information about the personal lives of sportsmen and women.
Subsequently, in Belgium, a group of 65 footballers, volleyball players and cyclists filed a case in the high court challenge the “whereabouts” rule on the grounds that it violates their right to personal privacy.
Their lawyer, Kristof De Saedeleer, complains: “This gives sports authorities in general and WADA in particular a pass to invade the privacy of athletes."
He claims the rule infringes the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of the Council of Europe. He and his athletes are not objecting to out-of-competition doping but claim the system is too invasive, forcing them even to raise a notification even they go to a specific restaurant or celebrity event.
De Saedeleer adds: “This is being forced even on sports where there is a minimal history of doping, or none at all. Just because there may be one criminal in the village does not mean the entire village should be jailed."
Bologna confusion
Then came the latest Italian case to add a further confusing twist to the balance of powers.
This brings the issue back to where it began in football terms. It was in Italy in the 1950s that the first serious allegations of doping were aroused and Bologna, in 1964, very nearly lost the Serie A league crown in a dope-test scandal.
Italian football has never rid itself of the doping shadow. In the early 1980s the increased use of vitamin and naturally-enhanced supplements such as carnitina became comparatively commonplace, not only in Italy but throughout western European football.
Football did not suffer athletics’ struggle with the illicit use of steroids but occasionally they were detected, usually when players wanted to speed the muscle-rebuilding process after being sidelined by serious injury.
Systematic post-match testing has long been the norm at major tournaments such as the World Cup and European Championship with only two major incidents.
Maradona scandal
The first was when Scotland’s Willie Johnston was sent home from the 1978 World Cup after taking an unauthorised cold cure while the second – and most notorious – saw Argentina’s Diego Maradona sent home from the 1994 finals in the United States. His ‘crime’ was being caught out taking an unauthorised weight-reducing substance.
Later, of course, Maradona’s mainstream career was brought to an untimely end after he failed a dope test in Italy for cocaine. Indeed, so-called “social drugs” are a greater issue in football probably than performance enhancers.
This is down to the nature of a team sport, of course. Even the East Germans, masters of sport pharmaceutical engineering, could not come up with drugs to help a footballer pass the ball more accurately, read a game more intelligently or shoot for goal more unerringly.
Not that this has stopped clubs doctors searching for solutions to enhance player fitness. Ironically, it was the discovery of a mountain of pills and tablets of all shapes and sizes at the Juventus training centre which uncovered the most recent, ‘Moggiopoli’ match-fixing scandal.
FIFA and WADA spent many years dancing around each other before football finally signed up to the Code ahead of the Beijing Olympics last year. But football still believes it “owns” a right to judge doping cases on their individual merit and not submit to the WADA scales of justice.
Expect the “whereabouts” controversy to be poisoning the alphabet soup for a long, long time to come.
* WADA is the governments-supported World Anti Doping Agency; FIFA is the world football federation; CAS or TAS is the Court of Arbitration for Sport (the ultimate sports appeal court); FIGC the Italian football federation; CONI the Italian Olympic committee which rules all Italian sport; and FIFpro the international footballers’ union.
Keywords · WADA · FIFA · CAS · TAS · FIGC · CONI · Italian football · doping · dope tests · Maradona
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