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Doping in Soccer/Football

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gooner said:
Good interview with The Secret Footballer. He's asked about PED use.

You write about players using creatine, which is obviously legal to use, but do you think there’s an issue in football with illegal (or indeed, legal) performance-enhancing drugs. Did you ever come across it in your experience of playing the game and do you believe it’s naive to assume football doesn’t have the kind of problems that other sports, most notably cycling and athletics, have suffered from in recent times?

I think that recreational drugs in the summer are rife. Cocaine is rife in the summer. Ecstasy is common too. But in season, recreational drugs are pretty much — although there are one or two rare exceptions — non-existent.

It just isn’t worth the risk, there is so much to lose and everybody knows the rules and the implications. And I don’t think many players miss recreational drugs, because they never took them in the years before they became footballers.

The vast majority of us, while not being a fully fledged professional until we’ve signed that first contract, have acted as professionals since we were 10 years old. So recreational drugs don’t often cross our paths. It’s the exposure to recreational drugs at an early age that is dangerous, but footballers tend to sidestep those pitfalls.

The concern is if so-called doping doctors infiltrate our game. There is already a ban in this country on blood spinning to increase white-blood cell count and speed up injury healing, but it’s legal in Germany. So we all travel to Germany and come back again.

Morally, you may argue that that is wrong, but then you would be biased towards the fact that we consider it illegal rather than contemplating the fact that it is legal elsewhere, and not in the back of beyond, but in a first world footballing hotbed.

http://www.the42.ie/secret-footballer-interview-2-3194751-Jan2017/?utm_source=twitter_self

Sounds like a massive deflection to me, on the level of lances (never tested positive)

Q. Do you guys use peds
A. No.
Oh wait, but "no" on it's own will look like a pathetic answer from a blog that pretends to give a behind the scenes look, so let's change the subject to something completely irrelevant and non related to appear honest, and answer that we take recreational drugs. But actually it's only during the summer ,(which in European football is a period that lasts around 10 days) and we never do so during the other 350 days of the year.
Then let's add the classic 2010's omerta line about "grey area" and the "potential" that one or two people might go to extreme lengths to get a tiny benefit while still following the rules, and totally ignore the mountains of evidence that football players are free to dope to pantani levels and that many have been doing so for several decades already.
 
Mar 25, 2013
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That's true. The rest of the interview is quite good but he's very vague and lacking in detail with this question. Talks too much about recreational when the question was posed on PED use.

It's the same in his previous book.
 
Doping authorities have performed no drug tests in Scottish football this season, it has emerged.
Only 28 tests were done in the last 18 months.


The English FA have carried out more than 1000 tests this season – and 3421 over 18 months.
Testing in sport is carried out by UK Anti-Doping, who are funded by the UK Government and sporting bodies including the FA.
The Scottish Football Association do not pay in. UK Anti-Doping said that was why testing was so low.
A spokesman said: “We have limited resources and have to put them into where we see the biggest problems and the biggest risks.”

The figure excludes tests performed at Scotland international matches or in UEFA club competitions.
Unlike in England, Scottish players are not tested out of competition.
UK Anti-Doping say two out of three tests in England are out of competition as athletes “think they can get away with it” then.

The figure excludes tests performed at Scotland international matches or in UEFA club competitions.
Unlike in England, Scottish players are not tested out of competition.
UK Anti-Doping say two out of three tests in England are out of competition as athletes “think they can get away with it” then.

Even rugby in Scotland performed 56 tests between July and September.
An SFA spokesman said: “The current anti-doping procedures from UK Anti-Doping are intelligence led.
“We have agreed to fund additional tests for the rest of the season and are in final discussions with UK Anti-Doping on the matter.”
 
Oct 16, 2010
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beatthatrat said:

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2011/sep/12/fa-drugs-tests-garry-oconnor

FA defends secret bans on players failing tests for recreational drugs
• Scottish international Garry O'Connor named by documentary
• O'Connor served secret ban for cocaine at Birmingham City
The programme also discovered that between April 2007 and August 2010, 240 drugs tests had to be abandoned because testers turned up at training grounds but players were not there. The clubs involved included Manchester City, Liverpool, Fulham, Everton, Newcastle, Swansea and Crystal Palace.
 
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Whoever saw PSG vs Barcelona knows PSG just stepped up another level. Making a team full of World Class footballers looking like children, even though PSG also has first level players demands something else.

Basically PSG did to Barcelona what Barcelona did to everybody else for the past decade, they entered the pitch more charged than the opponents.
Great match to watch though
 
Re:

AlbineVespuzzio said:
Whoever saw PSG vs Barcelona knows PSG just stepped up another level. Making a team full of World Class footballers looking like children, even though PSG also has first level players demands something else.

Basically PSG did to Barcelona what Barcelona did to everybody else for the past decade, they entered the pitch more charged than the opponents.
Great match to watch though
Isn't that what you'd expect them to do though if there was no doping? The game was largely won in midfield, and you'd certainly expect Rabiot, Verratti and Matuidi to comfortably out-run and out fight Busquets, Iniesta and Gomes if neither side had any help. Throw in some decent co-ordination and pressing and you get the expected dominance.

PSG is a team full of athletes; guys who look and are physically strong and fit. Who knows whether or not that is aided by doping; but to me it's far less suspicious than Barcelona were at their peak. They were essentially a load of guys who are small, pretty weak and didn't really look like athletes, but were outsprinting and outrunning everyone, while maintaing perfect technique for 90+ minutes.
 
Re: Re:

DFA123 said:
AlbineVespuzzio said:
Whoever saw PSG vs Barcelona knows PSG just stepped up another level. Making a team full of World Class footballers looking like children, even though PSG also has first level players demands something else.

Basically PSG did to Barcelona what Barcelona did to everybody else for the past decade, they entered the pitch more charged than the opponents.
Great match to watch though
Isn't that what you'd expect them to do though if there was no doping? The game was largely won in midfield, and you'd certainly expect Rabiot, Verratti and Matuidi to comfortably out-run and out fight Busquets, Iniesta and Gomes if neither side had any help. Throw in some decent co-ordination and pressing and you get the expected dominance.

PSG is a team full of athletes; guys who look and are physically strong and fit. Who knows whether or not that is aided by doping; but to me it's far less suspicious than Barcelona were at their peak. They were essentially a load of guys who are small, pretty weak and didn't really look like athletes, but were outsprinting and outrunning everyone, while maintaing perfect technique for 90+ minutes.

Considering Verratti makes Messi, Xavi and Iniesta look like Basketball players, i wouldn't mention him as someone who looks and is physically strong and fit.

In any case this is 2017 football. We just found out they don't even do tests anymore. I can't see a case for PSG and Barca not doping.
 
Jul 20, 2016
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Re: Re:

DFA123 said:
AlbineVespuzzio said:
Whoever saw PSG vs Barcelona knows PSG just stepped up another level. Making a team full of World Class footballers looking like children, even though PSG also has first level players demands something else.

Basically PSG did to Barcelona what Barcelona did to everybody else for the past decade, they entered the pitch more charged than the opponents.
Great match to watch though
Isn't that what you'd expect them to do though if there was no doping? The game was largely won in midfield, and you'd certainly expect Rabiot, Verratti and Matuidi to comfortably out-run and out fight Busquets, Iniesta and Gomes if neither side had any help. Throw in some decent co-ordination and pressing and you get the expected dominance.

PSG is a team full of athletes; guys who look and are physically strong and fit. Who knows whether or not that is aided by doping; but to me it's far less suspicious than Barcelona were at their peak. They were essentially a load of guys who are small, pretty weak and didn't really look like athletes, but were outsprinting and outrunning everyone, while maintaing perfect technique for 90+ minutes.
Not like that. PSG is full of athletes, and so is everybody else, they're all athletes. If you talking about "size", size doesn't help you run like a madman for 90 minutes. If something it should restrict your endurance ability. PSG was smarter because Barcelona wasn't expecting this level at this stage and did not prepare its players to run like that. Or maybe the players just didn't want to bother to dope like that anymore.
They sort of done enough for the club.

The manager "takes" the heat for bad "tactics" and bad "planning", and goes home with 3 seasons at a giant and 8 or 10 trophies in the pocket.

Welcome to modern football.
 
What happened to goetze.

I think pretty much everyone agrees there are major reasons to doubt that sudden explosion of Dortmund in the 2010's of which he was a part- especially since we all know in football there are no tests and klopps football is entirely based on his attacking players doing none stop sprints for 90 minutes.

His gradual fall from form, constant injuries and now apparently some strange illness.

Tour de France yellow jerseys don't get won on bread and water. I don't know if FIFA World cup winning moments do either.
 
Oct 16, 2010
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Fwiw, I think his drop in form had already started prior to the world cup in 2014.
I think him scoring the winning goal was a bit of a fluke.
 
Re: Re:

kingjr said:
The Hitch said:
kingjr said:
What do you think happened?

I don't know, hence why I asked the question.
I just thought you maybe had some idea, or a wild guess.
I think you have it the wrong way round.

The people that believe in clean sport (especially for their heroes), are the ones who claim to know exactly how everything takes place. They know for a fact that their favourite athletes never took EPO and never took steroids and never took testostrone and never took Aicar and that theyve never been offered it and that they are moral people etc.

We on the other hand are far more simple people. We know that athletes dope. How where and when, we realize are questions we cannot answer since unlike the believers, we don't believe things without evidence ;)
Those of
 
What are you talking about man, I'm not asking you to 'know' anything, so I fail to understand who you are adressing in your 1st paragraph or how it relates to my post. I repeat, I just thought you maybe had some idea or theory, if you don't that's fine, neither have I.
 

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