Doping raid Operación Galgo: Fuentes Caught...again

[khardung la]

Nah Real Madrid will put a contract on his head. Shame Barca are €340m in debt. They'll probably just shoot his family.

I am not so sure Madrid or Barca would have needed collaboration with Fuentes, to be honest. Those football players require recovery and a different plan than a cyclist or a endurance athlete, which is the expertise of Fuentes. They have their own doctors for a reason also, I don't think they would need doping outsourcing since potentially they have great doctors and facilities to maintain a doping project.

With a bussines relationship with Barca or Madrid fuentes would have not needed to risk his livelihood by helping to dope second class athletes and cyclists, providing much less money.

I also think that in the eventual case that Fuentes would uncover doping in football, the scandal would not be that big. Most of fans admire football players in Spain for their technique, charisma, sense of the game....nothing of that can be achieved by doping. Also I imagine if there is any collaboration with Fuentes it ended after OP, so the impact of that info would be lower given the time passed. If Fuentes was collaborating with spanish clubs most surely he did the same with some foreign clubs.... The show would go on anyway. Sad, I know.

 

[thehog]

Most of fans admire football players in Spain for their technique, charisma, sense of the game....nothing of that can be achieved by doping.

You're kidding right? Fatigue plays not part in these attributes? Late in the season after playing 3 games a week for 9 months technique, charisma(?), sense of game(?) is the same as month one?

Footballers run 15km+ per game. They need to blood dope.

 

[SaftyCyclist]

If you manage to bypass the time it takes to acquire fitness, there's a much larger scope to train the skills and technique required for football. Doping would be incredibly valuable to footballers, there's only so much time in the day, if you spend most of that on skills you're onto a winner, if you've prepared properly.

 

[sniper]

And to realize how many games are decided in the final ten minutes of the game.
Scoring late-minute winners used to be a German specialty of course, but Iniesta's goal against Chelsea in extra-time (semi-finals championsleague 2008/2009) suggests Spain has done some catching up in that respect.

 

[khardung la]

Sorry, I do not get it. There are sports where doping makes potentially a big difference against other competitors (cycling for example). In football it is a minor issue for being better than the others. Technique is almost all, and honestly I do not believe that technique is about hours of training at all.

A football player gets his technique when he is talented and young ( 8-18 years old more or less), later improvements are scarce and and more related to gaining experience, sense of team working, control of the game rythm etc... They do not dope when they are 15 years old.

I do agree that doping could help a football player to keep fresher in the last minutes of each game, to recover faster between matches etc... I just say that fans will not consider doped football players as guilty as athletes or cyclists, because it is not the same, they are there for merits that do not have to do with doping at all, many could be consider "artists".

Personally I will like to see dopers expulsed from all the sports (no ban, expulsion), I just talk about how different fans could react depending of the sport.

 

[hrotha]

Khardung, remember Sabino Padilla worked with Athletic, and there's rumours that Barça tried to hire Fuentes.

 

[Anonymous]

Sorry, I do not get it. There are sports where doping makes potentially a big difference against other competitors (cycling for example). In football it is a minor issue for being better than the others. Technique is almost all, and honestly I do not believe that technique is about hours of training at all.

A football player gets his technique when he is talented and young ( 8-18 years old more or less), later improvements are scarce and and more related to gaining experience, sense of team working, control of the game rythm etc... They do not dope when they are 15 years old.

I do agree that doping could help a football player to keep fresher in the last minutes of each game, to recover faster between matches etc... I just say that fans will not consider doped football players as guilty as athletes or cyclists, because it is not the same, they are there for merits that do not have to do with doping at all, many could be consider "artists".

Personally I will like to see dopers expulsed from all the sports (no ban, expulsion), I just talk about how different fans could react depending of the sport.

Disagree. Fitness and Stamina are a massive part of football, they dictate how you play the game. If a team is doping and has the fitness from it, they are able to play the pressure game early on, chase down every ball, press their opponents from the get go. Something an undoped team simply cant do. Stamina and Fitness can completely dictate how you play a game, what speed you play it at, how much you press, wether you play a wide game or narrow down the middle. Its massively relevant.

Real Madrid, Barce etc had the skill, but they also played the game at a terrific pace, and they had the ability to move the ball forward at speed through an entire 90 minutes without tiring. That was down to doping, and that won them matches. If you want to investigate the "skill" level at those teams look at their defensive records... Shocking.. They won games by attacking constantly for 90 minutes. Look at the opta ratings for their strikeforce back in the day when madrid had the galacticos. The three, sometimes four of five strikers/attacking midfields where swapping positions constantly and running the equivalent of half marathons in an just over an hour. That wins you games.

You see how important fitness is in fa cup games between top level clubs and non league clubs. For the first half an hour there is nothing between the two teams, the non league team will run around like rabbits chasing everything, when they tire though and the fitter team does not, that team can then use its skill to beat them.

Id actually say fitness and stamina are 60-70% of football, skill is maybe 30%. A fit gerrard is one of the best midfielders in the world, an unfit gerrard is about as much use as a djemba djemba

 

[khardung la]

Khardung, remember Sabino Padilla worked with Athletic, and there's rumours that Barça tried to hire Fuentes.

Again, I am not saying that doping does not benefit football players, I say that it does less than to cyclists or athletes. Accordingly, sport fans will not be that ****ed-off with football players as they are against Marta Dominguez. They get crazy with Iniesta making a pass among 5 enemy players, not with the player who runs more kilometers.

As a result I am not so sure Fuentes could get clear so easily by threatening with footbal connections. Maybe tennis would work better to him.

 

[sniper]

Sorry, I do not get it. There are sports where doping makes potentially a big difference against other competitors (cycling for example). In football it is a minor issue for being better than the others. Technique is almost all, and honestly I do not believe that technique is about hours of training at all.

A football player gets his technique when he is talented and young ( 8-18 years old more or less), later improvements are scarce and and more related to gaining experience, sense of team working, control of the game rythm etc... They do not dope when they are 15 years old.

I do agree that doping could help a football player to keep fresher in the last minutes of each game, to recover faster between matches etc... I just say that fans will not consider doped football players as guilty as athletes or cyclists, because it is not the same, they are there for merits that do not have to do with doping at all, many could be consider "artists".

Personally I will like to see dopers expulsed from all the sports (no ban, expulsion), I just talk about how different fans could react depending of the sport.

You must agree though that if everything else is equal (i.e. if two teams have equally technically-gifted players), the lungcapacity and/or musclepower will be decisive, and victory (and thereby millions of dollars) will go to the ones who illegally enhanced those facets of the game, rather than to the ones who played fair.

Personally, I think the commotion would be immense, much bigger than with cycling, if topranked Spanish football teams/players were to become implicated in Puerto/Galgo. Simply cuz the money and prestige involved is so much bigger/more.

On the other hand, it's true that e.g. several nandrolon- and other positives in football over the recent years have never really been taken seriously.
(I remember at least one, the Dutch player Frank de Boer, who did a nandrolon-positive. in holland, everybody thought that there had been made some mistake, and that he had been food-poisonned. Nobodfy doubted his innocense really.)

 

[Paco_P]

Y
On the other hand, it's true that e.g. several nandrolon- and other positives in football over the recent years have never really been taken seriously.
(I remember at least one, the Dutch player Frank de Boer, who did a nandrolon-positive. in holland, everybody thought that there had been made some mistake, and that he had been food-poisonned. Nobodfy doubted his innocense really.)

Another example: Pep Guardiola, current manager of Barca, was banned for some months while playing in Italy because of a positive nandrolone test.

 

[Paco_P]

As several have mentioned the related Spanish sports federations haven't done anything to mitigate the problem, this is local law enforcement.

In this regard, it's worth mentioning that Marta Dominguez is the (recently suspended) vice president of the Spanish Athletics Federation.

 

[sniper]

Another example: Pep Guardiola, current manager of Barca, was banned for some months while playing in Italy because of a positive nandrolone test.

And note that Frank de Boer was playing for Barca when he did the positive.

 

[hrotha]

Again, I am not saying that doping does not benefit football players, I say that it does less than to cyclists or athletes. Accordingly, sport fans will not be that ****ed-off with football players as they are against Marta Dominguez. They get crazy with Iniesta making a pass among 5 enemy players, not with the player who runs more kilometers.

As a result I am not so sure Fuentes could get clear so easily by threatening with footbal connections. Maybe tennis would work better to him.

Well, you were saying cycling and athletics doctors wouldn't be so useful for football teams, and Sabino Padilla is a nice example to the contrary. At the end of the day, a human body is a human body. Particularly, athletics doctors get to work on improving all facets of athletic performance, and it's no coincidence that most of these folks began their careers in athletics.

As for the impact of a big football team being involved, I think it would be huge (if properly exposed, of course). Expect demonstrations and accusations of "someone" wanting to destabilize X team, of it all being a hoax, demanding "justice" (i.e. complete aquittal), etc. Then, in theory all involved players should be banned, which would be huge and would almost definitely never happen. Football is such a media circus that I think something like this would break omerta in one blow and we'd have tons of former players talking about doping.

I can't wait for this to happen. Sooner or later, someone will make a mistake, vital info will be leaked and no one will be able to keep it covered. I can dream.

 

[Anonymous]

Again, I am not saying that doping does not benefit football players, I say that it does less than to cyclists or athletes.

Actually you pretty much did, saying that football was all down to skill, a point i contradicted and you failed to respond to after i took such a long time writing my post.

 

[veganrob]

OF course doping will help football(soccer in US) players. It will help in every athletic event. It is like in US there are still some people who believe won't help a baseball player, Barry Bonds, sheesh, doped because it takes skill to hit a baseball. Sure it does, but when those fly balls to the warning track are now going out of the park, and the player has put on 30 lbs of muscle in the off season, something is up. Wake up people.
And football, sure game of skill, but also strength and stamina. One can maintain skill longer with artificially produced endurance and strength.

 

[The Hitch]

Again, I am not saying that doping does not benefit football players, I say that it does less than to cyclists or athletes. Accordingly, sport fans will not be that ****ed-off with football players as they are against Marta Dominguez. They get crazy with Iniesta making a pass among 5 enemy players, not with the player who runs more kilometers.

As a result I am not so sure Fuentes could get clear so easily by threatening with footbal connections. Maybe tennis would work better to him.

Ill split this into 2. 1 physical aspects. 2 Mathematical theory

Physical aspect.

First a few points about the physical aspect. 1 Injury recovery. We have been over this but thats were doping is at its peak. So that on its own makes peds big in football.
2 cyclists focus mainly on 1 aspect, endurance. Being able to dish out that same pace longer. But footballers use peds on Strenght, top speed and stamina. So a footballers epo wont help him as much as the cyclist, and his hgh wont help him as much as the sprinter and his muscle steroids wont help him as much as pudzianowski but together they are a potent force.

Who cares if you can do joga bonito when the player behind you catches you at a rate of 5 m /s knocks you over with his little finger, does this for 90 minutes and 3 days later is back to 100% fitness. Never underestimate how important strenght and speed are, and how much they can be improved through doping. Half the brazillian wonderkids never make it cos they get nudged off the ball the second they get into a higher league.
_______________________________________________________________

Mathematical point.

How many crit racers do you have in the world. How many kids growing up wanting to be and training to be cyclists.

How many kids grow up in football academies, playing football every day from the age of 4.

Ive heard several times the number of proffessional cyclists worldwide being around 3000. this is a rough figure. It seems high to me actually.

On the other hand there are 5000 proffessional footballers in England alone. Ive heard the world wide figure as 3 million +. Again these are rough, figures but we get the idea that for every 1 proffesional cyclist there might be about 1000 pro footballers.


If you were to create a graph judging talent with all the proffessional cyclists in the world you would get significant gaps between dots because there are only so many of them.

But if you were to create such a graph for footballers you would find the gaps to be microscopic compared to the cyclists. For every gap between 2 cyclists you will fit in 1000 footballers.

For the cyclists you would need a performance increase of say 5% to get from one cyclists to another (never mind that some say epo produces 3 times that).

For the footballers since the gaps are so much smaller, the performance increase needed for one footballer to overtake another is therefore also smaller.

So in the more populated sport a smaller doping advantage will actually give a bigger increase.

 

[hrotha]

There's some talk flying around about contacts between Maynar and Real Madrid doctors, and some innuendo about Barça players and even Fuentes. As far as I know it's only one journalist so far (Paco González), but from what I gather he's a pretty important guy and has a solid reputation.

(Please don't kill me, Aguirre, this is just something Paco González said, it's not my fault)

edit: it doesn't seem to be too serious though. Mostly a bit of a joke. But it's made many people nervous.

 

[thehog]

Plus if you have to roast 3 chics in front out your team mates you need to be be in top condition. Doping helps.

 

[khardung la]

There's some talk flying around about contacts between Maynar and Real Madrid doctors, and some innuendo about Barça players and even Fuentes. As far as I know it's only one journalist so far (Paco González), but from what I gather he's a pretty important guy and has a solid reputation.

(Please don't kill me, Aguirre, this is just something Paco González said, it's not my fault)

edit: it doesn't seem to be too serious though. Mostly a bit of a joke. But it's made many people nervous.

Sorry, can you provide with a link or something? Never heard of a Maynar-R. Madrid connection and find it very unlikely, so I would appreciate any further info. I cannot locate anything that P. Gonzalez has said yesterday or today regarding Maynar neither.

 

[ultimobici]

Sorry, I do not get it. There are sports where doping makes potentially a big difference against other competitors (cycling for example). In football it is a minor issue for being better than the others. Technique is almost all, and honestly I do not believe that technique is about hours of training at all.

A football player gets his technique when he is talented and young ( 8-18 years old more or less), later improvements are scarce and and more related to gaining experience, sense of team working, control of the game rythm etc... They do not dope when they are 15 years old.

I do agree that doping could help a football player to keep fresher in the last minutes of each game, to recover faster between matches etc... I just say that fans will not consider doped football players as guilty as athletes or cyclists, because it is not the same, they are there for merits that do not have to do with doping at all, many could be consider "artists".

Personally I will like to see dopers expulsed from all the sports (no ban, expulsion), I just talk about how different fans could react depending of the sport.

EPO allows an athlete to maintain their work-rate for almost 20% longer. Translated into football terms that means a doped player would be able to carry on into extra time significantly less fatigued than an undoped player. However skilled he is is affected by his level of fatigue.

The only reason one does not hear of doped players to the degree one hears of cyclist doping is that the testing is less aggressive and the penalties for a missed test are laughable.

The assertion that football is any less likely to have widespread doping is ridiculous in the extreme.

 

[khardung la]

The only reason one does not hear of doped players to the degree one hears of cyclist doping is that the testing is less aggressive and the penalties for a missed test are laughable.

The assertion that football is any less likely to have widespread doping is ridiculous in the extreme.

Please read my posts. You are not the first one that says that I said something I did not say today. I said nothing about how widespread it is in football (I guess it is widespread, since there are lots of money involved). I know that the testing system in football is less agressive. Hence I don't see why you misinterpret my posts.

I just said that given that doping in football is perceived to be less critical for performance than in cycling, probably the fans will not be so scandalized as with cyclists, where endurance and not technique is almost all.

You can arque if doping in football is making more or less differences, like other posters did. I have a clear opinion about that after seeing how small players with comparatively poor athletic conditions are going to win the biggest individual prize in football. With that I am not saying that they do not dope or that doping does not make a difference in football, I just say that it is not as big factor as in cycling, so fans will not make a big scandal.

It happened with many football players who doped and have strong support from fans (Guardiola). Same thing in american football or NHL. Those fans do not see doping as a big issue. We (us) see doping as a big issue in cycling because endurance is everything in the sport, and it is really artificially boosted by PEDs.

anyway, just my opinion.

 

[Anonymous]

Sometimes i feel like im talking to myself.

I always work on the basis that if someone doesnt respond to your points but responds to other peoples its cos youre right and they have no response

 

[hrotha]

Sorry, can you provide with a link or something? Never heard of a Maynar-R. Madrid connection and find it very unlikely, so I would appreciate any further info. I cannot locate anything that P. Gonzalez has said yesterday or today regarding Maynar neither.

Nope, sorry, I can only find secondary sources (i.e. people talking about it... at forums, twitter and such). Anyway, apparently it's an inocuous, indirect link, it's not that Real Madrid worked with Maynar but with a university that employed Maynar or something, and apparently there's nothing shady involved. I want that to be clear. I brought it up because of the reaction you can see in forums, which I think illustrates the current mood and how the commonly held view about doping and football might be starting to show cracks.

 

[ultimobici]

Please read my posts. You are not the first one that says that I said something I did not say today. I said nothing about how widespread it is in football (I guess it is widespread, since there are lots of money involved). I know that the testing system in football is less agressive. Hence I don't see why you misinterpret my posts.

I just said that given that doping in football is perceived to be less critical for performance than in cycling, probably the fans will not be so scandalized as with cyclists, where endurance and not technique is almost all.

You can arque if doping in football is making more or less differences, like other posters did. I have a clear opinion about that after seeing how small players with comparatively poor athletic conditions are going to win the biggest individual prize in football. With that I am not saying that they do not dope or that doping does not make a difference, I just say that it is not as big factor as in cycling, so fans will not make a big scandal.

It happened with many football players who doped and have strong support from fans (Guardiola). Same thing in american football or NHL. Those fans do not see doping as a big issue. We (us) see doping as a big issue in cycling because endurance is everything in the sport, and it is really artificially boosted by PEDs.

anyway, just my opinion.

The sport may have a high emphasis on skill but the benefit doping brings is not just in athletic enhancement but also in recovery from injury as well as general recovery.

We see players coming back from injuries in a remarkably small timeframe these days.

The claim that skill is the dominant quality is ignoring the fact that a Premiership player will run almost 12km in a match. The pace of the sport and the athleticism required compared to 20 years ago is breathtaking. The likes of Jimmy Greaves & George Best would be dead in the water despite their talent.

Rooney is reckoned to be able to sprint at a pace that would put him within a second of the 100m WR. This is a guy who is a striker, so he runs less than a midfielder would. A player does need football talent, but the athletic & injury/recovery potential that doping would allow is likely the difference between winning & losing.

 

[sniper]

Sometimes i feel like im talking to myself.

I always work on the basis that if someone doesnt respond to your points but responds to other peoples its cos youre right and they have no response

+1
Some around here are indeed quite good at repeating their own points endlessly, without reflecting on comments provided by others.