Channel 4 to name and shame dozens of football stars who use drugs... including premiership ace who tested positive for cocaine
- Failed drug tests were never made public by FA
- FA will wait to see programme before responding
A top Premier League footballer who tested positive for cocaine is set to be named tonight in a Channel 4 investigation into drug use among soccer stars.
The player, who will be exposed in the channel's Dispatches, completed a ‘multi-million-pound’ transfer without the buying club knowing he had tested positive for cocaine.
The sportsman is among dozens of English professional footballers who will be named and shamed for failing out-of-competition drug tests that have never been made public by the FA.
None of those named have failed tests for what would be considered performance-enhancing drugs. But, dating back to 2003, the UK anti-doping agency have caught up to 43 professional footballers using cocaine, ecstasy or cannabis in out-of-competition testing.
The programme also makes much of 240 ‘abandoned’ tests between April 2007 and August 2010, with testers arriving at training grounds to discover that the players targeted were not there. But these cases are not comparable with the Rio Ferdinand episode - who was banned for eight months after missing a drug test in 2003 - as the clubs and players would not have known the testers were coming on that day.
The FA will wait to see the programme before responding but last night Wembley officials were understood to be disappointed because they consider their testing to be more extensive than in any other sport in the country.
Football pays for more than 60 per cent of tests on athletes in the UK, and their policy of protecting the identity of players who fail out-of-competition tests for recreational drugs is not in breach of any World Anti-Doping Agency regulations. WADA don’t even demand that athletes are tested out of competition for recreational drugs.
Those who fail tests for these sorts of drugs in competition are named by the FA. But the policy of protecting those exposed this evening — the FA consider it better to treat and educate them privately — is questioned by the head of WADA, David Howman.
Asked whether the FA should disclose how many players are tested or how many tests take place, he replied: ‘The answer to that is why not? If you don’t then you are susceptible to an allegation that you’re hiding something.
‘They’re saying they haven’t got a doping problem because there are not many positive tests. I think the answer to that is: don’t we need to conduct better research to see what the prevalence of doping is? Until we are satisfied by the use of all the gathering of evidence I don’t think we’re in a position to say (there is not a drug problem in English football).’
The programme also features a former member of Chelsea’s staff criticising the use of intravenous iron infusions and reveals evidence of former Chelsea and Manchester United doctors attending a clinic which uses Actovegin — a treatment made from calf’s blood not licensed in North America but permitted in Europe. It is not on WADA’s banned list.
In a statement to Dispatches, the FA said: ‘The FA operates a comprehensive anti-doping programme which is the largest of any sport in the UK. The FA go beyond the WADA Code by proactively testing all samples for social drugs, irrespective of whether the tests are conducted in or out of competition.’
- Dispatches: The Truth About Drugs In Football, tonight 8pm, C4
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2036409/Channel-4s-Dispatches-drug-shame-player-cocaine-tonight.html
