Dispatches: The Truth About Drugs In Football

[lancaster]

if this was a ped it'd be creatine!

 

[Anonymous]

that was incredible crap. 45 minutes of my life i will never get back (didnt bother watching the last 15 minutes)

 

[luckyboy]

Damn, missed this. Have it recorded though.

By the sounds of it it's a good thing I didn't bother telling any football fan I know to watch it.

 

[bobbins]

Thought it was pretty interesting. Shows how easy it is to 'hide' positive results / missed tests.

I wonder what other sports are like as far as that sort of thing goes?

 

[Mrs John Murphy]

With libel laws being what they are in the UK and the fact that footballers like John Terry, Giggs etc are millionaires who can afford the lawyers to keep the dirty laundry away from public view I suspect that a lot of the material had to be cut out.

 

[Dr. Maserati]

that was incredible crap. 45 minutes of my life i will never get back (didnt bother watching the last 15 minutes)

It actually picked up as it went on - and for soccer, I thought it was a pretty significant piece.

A lot of what was aired is hardly a surprise to anyone here, indeed we mentioned many of the points already including their 'whistle-blower' Richard Sadlier.
What will be most interesting and revealing is how the FA and the individual clubs react to the programme.
I expect it to be along the same lines as cycling - anyone who spoke out is bitter, the tests work and they were protecting the identities of the athletes as there is no wrongdoing, yada yada.

 

[hatcher]

Yeah the final part picked up a bit, with Ranieri's doctors, the off-site drip-room, and the lack of follow up to (or plain hiding of) the testosterone cases at the end. Seems like a lot of people had already turned off by that point though.

 

[The Hitch]

It actually picked up as it went on - and for soccer, I thought it was a pretty significant piece.

A lot of what was aired is hardly a surprise to anyone here, indeed we mentioned many of the points already including their 'whistle-blower' Richard Sadlier.
What will be most interesting and revealing is how the FA and the individual clubs react to the programme.
I expect it to be along the same lines as cycling - anyone who spoke out is bitter, the tests work and they were protecting the identities of the athletes as there is no wrongdoing, yada yada.

I dont know why you keep mentioning and mentioning Sadlier expecting people to be impressed. If drugs in football is limited to good innocent footballers getting their food spiked unknowingly by evil non-footballers, then i will personally apologize personally to every footballer ever accused.

I dont care if coaches are giving players little add ons to their food without the good old players knowing, which is how sadlier presents it.

What we are talking about is players spending millions to transfuse blood and going on complicated lengthy doping programs.

the kind of things which Operation Puerto proves exist and which "pundit" sadlier has never breathed word one about.

 

[B_Ugli]

I watched some of this and like others switched off after half way through - mainly because the presenter was so unbelievably boring.

If the UCI are reluctant to pursue cyclists because the stars have the money to successfully defend being sanctioned then you have got to assume that set against what this program revealed, trying to publicly sanction a footballer would be equally expensive for the authorities.

In any event you can hardly class footballers as highly tuned athletes which makes performance enhancing in football all the more laughable. Its a bit like performance enhancing a pot bellied pig. You only have to see them all dead on their feet when a match goes to extra time to realise just how unfit the average footballer is.

 

[euanli]

In any event you can hardly class footballers as highly tuned athletes which makes performance enhancing in football all the more laughable. Its a bit like performance enhancing a pot bellied pig. You only have to see them all dead on their feet when a match goes to extra time to realise just how unfit the average footballer is.

You are quite ignorant to the requirements of top flight football. If footballers are so unfit and unable to complete at the end of 90 minutes then surely that is the case for performance enhancing drugs and highly tuned athletes. The team who is still running about at 85 minutes like it was 5 minutes into the game has a deadly advantage. Much like if every team charges down for the Tour but yours charges up and you ride your blue train to victory.

Footbal is like repeated running the 100 meters for 90 minutes with some breaks in between, not walking about a park for an equal amount of time. To do that and not have the muscle fatigue to still perform accurate passes and shots? Yeah no benefit of PEDs in there at all.

Anyway it did pick up in the final 15 minutes. Like I said earlier in this thread I was uneasy with Richard Sadlier being used as an example of a drugs cheat. All we can take from his time at Millwall is that;

a) Sports science works
b) Being told you are getting special treatment to make you a better player also has a psychological effect to help you play better
c) Players are not target tested based on their form
d) The club doctor wasn't aware of banned substances or checked ingredients of supplements for those that were on the prohibited list
e) Testing was woefully inadequate
f) The manager was slightly concerned about PED use

There is a danger from his story that it infers that there is intentional PED use, rather than the reality which is the potential use of PEDs. I think that distracts from the real issue with is the sporting bodies are either unable, unwilling or totally incompetent in their testing of footballers. Another aspect we learnt is that the FA is willing and capable of making tests disappear.

These two aspects are the ones that hurt anti doping. And they are also all too similar to what we see with the UCI.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Just came across this article (May 2011) while searching for whatever Arsene Wenger said about doping - http://joe.ie/football/football-news/arsene-wenger-dismisses-paul-mersons-doping-claims-0012200-1

In it he says..



20 controls in a squad of what, 40? every year..

That really disappoints me (and shows how Wenger has reacted to difficult times), considering he had previously been one of the most vocal about drugs in football - in 2004 he announced that he felt some clubs were doping players with EPO and that medical tests carried out on some new Arsenal signings carried out those hallmarks. EPO was not tested for in football at the time. He also complained at one point about the lack of testing, saying he had some players who had been on his squad for 5 years and not been drug tested once.

Still, those were better times for Arsenal and him.

i am honestly surprised how people haven't discussed how stronger then every1 else cristiano ronaldo is at the end of a game. when i saw this thread i thought people would be all over him like nadal on the tennis thread.

It's not just Ronaldo. How many games do the top teams win in the last ten minutes of the game? Weaker teams can often hold on for 80 minutes but get crushed in the last 10. Who were the four teams strongly linked to Puerto? Real, Barcelona, was it Sevilla and Betis or Valencia and Betis? If Valencia, they were pretty big for a few years before that...

Problem with that article is that he doesn't know what he was taking and we don't know what he was taking. Both he and we end up assuming that everything he was doing was banned and the club were doing it knowingly. Its a dangerous assumption to make really.

Yes, of course it's an assumption, but what Sadler points out is the naïveté of the sportsman in the action. He just took it because the club told him to. Because of the effects it had he makes the assumption that it was probably banned. It may have been above board, but what's to say that then at other clubs other people similarly happy to just take what they're given at clubs weren't being given banned things? He just highlights the "just do what you're told and don't think too much about it" approach. Just like Jesús Hernández said about the "heated massage pads" that turned out to be synthetic testosterone he was given at Liberty Seguros. The athlete just goes with the flow and doesn't think too hard about it.

One of my favourite articles on doping in football was about the English league. They said that 22 teams of the four top divisions were on at least one strike for failing to provide whereabouts information for players, including five Premiership teams at the time. The average EPL player will be tested twice a year. For reference, Rabobank published their list of tests for the year 2009, and Pedro Horrillo - who clocked up a total of 30 competition days after his horror crash in the Giro curtailed his season, and who didn't win or place highly in anything all season - was tested 6 times. Denis Menchov was tested 42 times.

Another statistic for you?

The number of footballers dying due to cardiac problems either on-field or as a result of on-field actions has increased by a staggering 550% since the 1980s. It doubled in the 90s then shot up significantly in the 00s. This may be nothing especially important, but given that it would match up with the EPO era in cycling, and it is reasonable to assume that an endurance sport would pick up on an endurance drug first, it is not unreasonable to join the dots, as Jonathan Vaughters might say.

 

[Dr. Maserati]

I dont know why you keep mentioning and mentioning Sadlier expecting people to be impressed. If drugs in football is limited to good innocent footballers getting their food spiked unknowingly by evil non-footballers, then i will personally apologize personally to every footballer ever accused.

I dont care if coaches are giving players little add ons to their food without the good old players knowing, which is how sadlier presents it.

What we are talking about is players spending millions to transfuse blood and going on complicated lengthy doping programs.

the kind of things which Operation Puerto proves exist and which "pundit" sadlier has never breathed word one about.

My apologies that mentioning Sadlier twice has upset you so much - I was thinking of using some other players confessions like Wayne Rooney David Beckham, guy with long hair at Liverpool or Ferdinand Rio, but then I remembered none of them have actually commented on anything.

Perhaps the reason Sadlier isn't able to highlight the "millions" he spent on "going on complicated lengthy doping programs" is because he spent his career at world-beaters Millwall.
And perhaps the reason he doesn't have much to say on Puerto and how it effected his career is because he had already retired by 2006?

<snipped for brevity>

There is a danger from his story that it infers that there is intentional PED use, rather than the reality which is the potential use of PEDs. I think that distracts from the real issue with is the sporting bodies are either unable, unwilling or totally incompetent in their testing of footballers. Another aspect we learnt is that the FA is willing and capable of making tests disappear.

These two aspects are the ones that hurt anti doping. And they are also all too similar to what we see with the UCI.

Actually Sadlier admitted he was using a a banned substance for a year until his Doc realized that it was on the banned list.
It shows that there was little concern over the testing and that even small clubs with limited budgets were engaged in the murky world of enhancement where there is a fine line between what is or is not legal.

 

[B_Ugli]

You are quite ignorant to the requirements of top flight football. If footballers are so unfit and unable to complete at the end of 90 minutes then surely that is the case for performance enhancing drugs and highly tuned athletes. The team who is still running about at 85 minutes like it was 5 minutes into the game has a deadly advantage. Much like if every team charges down for the Tour but yours charges up and you ride your blue train to victory.

Footbal is like repeated running the 100 meters for 90 minutes with some breaks in between, not walking about a park for an equal amount of time. To do that and not have the muscle fatigue to still perform accurate passes and shots? Yeah no benefit of PEDs in there at all.

Not really, in my opinion "Professional" Footballers are about as unprofessional as you can get in terms of Athletes. This goes for their fitness levels, and conduct on and off the pitch. You wouldnt see an "athlete" in any other sport going on a drink (and whatever else) bender the night before a big event. They are barely fit to last the length of the match which I would say makes them unfit. A 3rd category cyclist is fitter than a typical premiership footballer - and probably more professional in his approach.

This is why PEDs in Football is so laughable as footballers are nowhere near 100% fitness before they take PEDs.

 

[simoni]

Not really, in my opinion "Professional" Footballers are about as unprofessional as you can get in terms of Athletes. This goes for their fitness levels, and conduct on and off the pitch. You wouldnt see an "athlete" in any other sport going on a drink (and whatever else) bender the night before a big event. They are barely fit to last the length of the match which I would say makes them unfit. A 3rd category cyclist is fitter than a typical premiership footballer - and probably more professional in his approach.

This is why PEDs in Football is so laughable as footballers are nowhere near 100% fitness before they take PEDs.

Possibly in Britain at least although we seem to see a little less of premiership stars out on benders before matches these days. I have a feeling that the culture in other countries is a little different.

As far as drug taking in football goes its about risk and reward isn't it? The risk appears minimal and the financial rewards, to both players and clubs, unimaginable to most. I'd be amazed if there wasn't significant use of HGH for injury recovery and physical development and EPO for endurance/recovery at most of the biggest clubs.

And don't expect FIFA to do anything about it. Yet another governing body that matches the UCI in terms of brazen corruptness.

The cocaine stuff is irrelevant as far as I can see. All that shows is that unsupervised rich young adults will take recreational drugs which is hardly football's individual problem.

 

[The Hitch]

My apologies that mentioning Sadlier twice has upset you so much - I was thinking of using some other players confessions like Wayne Rooney David Beckham, guy with long hair at Liverpool or Ferdinand Rio, but then I remembered none of them have actually commented on anything.

Perhaps the reason Sadlier isn't able to highlight the "millions" he spent on "going on complicated lengthy doping programs" is because he spent his career at world-beaters Millwall.
And perhaps the reason he doesn't have much to say on Puerto and how it effected his career is because he had already retired by 2006?

Yes, in 2 posts you try to hype him up as a major piece of the puzzle, where in reality, he fits in quite well with the existing order and his comments dont challenge too much the idea that footballers would not go on major doping programs. Besides there have been other threads before.

I never said Sadlier should have known about Operation Puerto or EPO, rather that he wasnt a major whistleblower.


I dont consider the queen of england to be a major whistleblower either. When i say that am I suggesting that she should know about epo OP etc, or am i just making the simple point that she has not addressed those issues, ergo is not a major whistleblower?

 

[Dr. Maserati]

Yes, in 2 posts you try to hype him up as a major piece of the puzzle, where in reality, he fits in quite well with the existing order and his comments dont challenge too much the idea that footballers would not go on major doping programs. Besides there have been other threads before.

I never said Sadlier should have known about Operation Puerto or EPO, rather that he wasnt a major whistleblower.


I dont consider the queen of england to be a major whistleblower either. When i say that am I suggesting that she should know about epo OP etc, or am i just making the simple point that she has not addressed those issues, ergo is not a major whistleblower?

I am not trying to hype him - he is what he is.
An ex player who recounts his career in an open way without pressure or having already been caught/suspected or who can be painted as bitter.

How many cyclists who have spoken out in cycling are like him, and what information did they provide? I can think of 3 (over 25 years) who fit that bill.

Your problem is that you are looking at this through cycling and looking for 'major whistleblowers' that provides great detail - when in effect there have been very few that have done that.

 

[euanli]

Not really, in my opinion "Professional" Footballers are about as unprofessional as you can get in terms of Athletes. This goes for their fitness levels, and conduct on and off the pitch. You wouldnt see an "athlete" in any other sport going on a drink (and whatever else) bender the night before a big event. They are barely fit to last the length of the match which I would say makes them unfit. A 3rd category cyclist is fitter than a typical premiership footballer - and probably more professional in his approach.

This is why PEDs in Football is so laughable as footballers are nowhere near 100% fitness before they take PEDs.

I think this post highlights again your lack of knowledge about football over English/Scottish domestic players and tabloid stories. There are reasons why Spanish/Italians players tend to have longer careers.

Actually Sadlier admitted he was using a a banned substance for a year until his Doc realized that it was on the banned list.
It shows that there was little concern over the testing and that even small clubs with limited budgets were engaged in the murky world of enhancement where there is a fine line between what is or is not legal.

I know he has anecdotal evidence that he was taking a banned substance however that shows no intention to cheat the rules which is the way it sounds when he and dispatches tell it. It turns the player and the club into the bad guy where in this case it is the system of testing (and the doctors responsibility) that failed. I believe the telling of it distracts from this issue.

 

[Dr. Maserati]

<snipped for brevity>

I know he has anecdotal evidence that he was taking a banned substance however that shows no intention to cheat the rules which is the way it sounds when he and dispatches tell it. It turns the player and the club into the bad guy where in this case it is the system of testing (and the doctors responsibility) that failed. I believe the telling of it distracts from this issue.

It doesn't detract from it, it adds to it.

If it was only a case of shoddy unprofessional testing it could be painted to not matter as footballers do not take PEDs and are in the care of team Doctors etc.
When it actually shows that a small club like Millwall were putting their players on a program (10 years ago) with not too much consideration for what substances are being consumed. It is the same way that PEDs entered cycling.

 

[The Hitch]

Your problem is that you are looking at this through cycling and looking for 'major whistleblowers' that provides great detail - when in effect there have been very few that have done that.

There you go with your attempted mind reading again. Not the first time you try telling me what i think.

Unfortunately as always, your disadvantage is that you cant read my mind.

My problem is not that i look at it through cycling. I dont. I have no idea where you get that idea from Dr Phil

My problem is that I don't care if players are unknowingly taking steroids.

I want players found transfusing blood, found paying sums to doctors, found claiming long lost twins were responsible for testorone boosts.

Frank Lebouf did a million times more for the antidoping movement in football when he said he was worried footballers would turn to doping, and that he knew some that already had, than someone saying coaches are spiking players.

Especially at a minor team where it can be dismissed as some less talented clubs trying to cheat - the story usually used.

Of course the fact that Sadlier gets work as a football pundit, whereas Lebouf got told to shut the **** up, helps demonstrate this.

 

[Dr. Maserati]

There you go with your attempted mind reading again. Not the first time you try telling me what i think.

Unfortunately as always, your disadvantage is that you cant read my mind.

My problem is not that i look at it through cycling. I dont. I have no idea where you get that idea from Dr Phil

My problem is that I don't care if players are unknowingly taking steroids.

I want players found transfusing blood, found paying sums to doctors, found claiming long lost twins were responsible for testorone boosts.

Frank Lebouf did a million times more for the antidoping movement in football when he said he was worried footballers would turn to doping, and that he knew some that already had, than someone saying coaches are spiking players.

Especially at a minor team where it can be dismissed as some less talented clubs trying to cheat - the story usually used.

Of course the fact that Sadlier gets work as a football pundit, whereas Lebouf got told to shut the **** up, helps demonstrate this.

No I am not a mind reader, but I am reading your posts (what you volunteer to write) and I would have no hesitation in apologizing in your viewpoint is not what I assume.

However, if you are not looking at this through a cycling viewpoint then why do you want football to have the exact same doping issues that cycling has before you are impressed?

As for Sadlier - he became a 'pundit' (in Ireland) well before he admitted what went on at Millwall.

 

[Mambo95]

There you go with your attempted mind reading again. Not the first time you try telling me what i think.

Unfortunately as always, your disadvantage is that you cant read my mind.

My problem is not that i look at it through cycling. I dont. I have no idea where you get that idea from Dr Phil

My problem is that I don't care if players are unknowingly taking steroids.

I want players found transfusing blood, found paying sums to doctors, found claiming long lost twins were responsible for testorone boosts.

Frank Lebouf did a million times more for the antidoping movement in football when he said he was worried footballers would turn to doping, and that he knew some that already had, than someone saying coaches are spiking players.

Especially at a minor team where it can be dismissed as some less talented clubs trying to cheat - the story usually used.

Of course the fact that Sadlier gets work as a football pundit, whereas Lebouf got told to shut the **** up, helps demonstrate this.

Franck Lebouf works as a pundit for both ESPN and Eurosport. So that theory makes no sense.

 

[The Hitch]

No I am not a mind reader, but I am reading your posts (what you volunteer to write) and I would have no hesitation in apologizing in your viewpoint is not what I assume.

However, if you are not looking at this through a cycling viewpoint then why do you want football to have the exact same doping issues that cycling has before you are impressed?

As for Sadlier - he became a 'pundit' (in Ireland) well before he admitted what went on at Millwall.

I appreciate the first bit.

As for the second bit I believe all sports have doping issues. You could say im looking at it through athletics or strongman, or a number of other sports with doping histories.

And its not that I dont respect that Sadlier has spoken out, just that I dont think what he offers is exactly what is needed. He says he was doped by coaches 10 years ago and you correctly point out that if teams were using doping products then it suggests they might be using them now.

But to illustrate how I feel about that ill bring the discussion to cycling for an example.

Would you be content if instead of everything that Lance has been accused of in the last 10 years, instead of all of that, the tests, the reports the problems, investigations etc, the entire argument against Lance being clean came down to a article by some guy from a continental team in 2006 that he found out 1 of his coaches was putting a few steoids into his food 15 years ago?

Would i be wrong to think that you prefer to have the testimonies, the tests, the investigations and all that on your side?


As for the third, well i would suggest if what he said caused any major problems for the FIFa that we know to be corrupt then maybe there would have been some implications.

@ Mambo, yeah i probably approached that the wrong way, you are right, but i would point out that Lebouf was a major footballer at the highest level, Sadlier was not. And like Rusedski in tennis its been shown that if someone like that is willing to shut up, their place in the football money making machine is not under threat.

 

[Paco_P]

I think this post highlights again your lack of knowledge about football over English/Scottish domestic players and tabloid stories. There are reasons why Spanish/Italians players tend to have longer careers.

Like Ryan Giggs?

He's a fine, upstanding fellow. It would be a huge shock were he a doper.

 

[richtea]

I managed to watch this programme last night. It was suggestive that the big picture problems in football are similar to those in cycling - if not a more deeply entreched code of silence with respect to covered up test results. But it did also suggest the specifics are different - players seemed to have relatively little knowledge of the medical treatment they were receiving, and treatment programmes were led by the teams and the medical staff.

They made a lot of out of what was actually quite a limited set of evidence, and part of the problem obviously is that footballers will rarely have a case to answer as the testing system is so weak. For things to change, there would need to be Festina style event - probably taking the form of a raid on the medical department of one the big clubs, as the WADA representative suggested on the programme.

 

[nevada]

Was surprsed that they didnt look more at HGH and transfusions/EPO - It looked like the reporter hadnt done his homework.