Thegoalmac can reveal that the chief of Fifa's medical committee, Michel D'Hooghe, says there is
"no doping culture" in professional football but admits he would be
"crazy" to suggest that no doping at all exists in the game,as Diego Maradona's case in 1994 world cup proves it.
He
also suggests that football as a discipline does not benefit from doping
like other sports and that the risk of sanctions is a serious deterrent
to players.
Continue to see all he said about doping in football and tell me if you agree with him.
D'Hooghe's claims follow what was described as a
doping-free World Cup in Brazil in which all 736 participants had their
blood and urine tested.
Fifa carried out 777 tests in the run-up
to the World Cup and another 232 were completed during the tournament
itself, while the four semi-finalists were also subjected to random
tests before the last weekend of fixtures. All came back negative.
"If
you would like me to say there is no doping in football, I would be
crazy," he said at the Leaders Sports Business Summit at Stamford
Bridge. "What I can say is there is no doping culture in football.
"Why is there not as much doping in football as there is in other disciplines?
"First
of all, football is a discipline where, besides the important physical
effort, there is an important technical aspect and there is an important
tactical aspect.
"Secondly, the players know they will be
controlled. We are the international federation that does by far the
largest number of doping controls over each year. Each year we do about
30,000 doping controls in the world.
"Thirdly, look at the World
Cup in Brazil. We had preparatory meetings with the 32 team doctors
asking for their collaboration and they all signed the charter that they
would collaborate to a doping-free World Cup. I know this is rather
symbolic but it has an important value.
"Fourthly, at all our youth competitions, we inform our youth players about the dangers of abuse of doping and so on.
"I think we cannot do more."
There
were 28,002 doping tests carried out in football in 2013, 21,638 (77
per cent) of which were urine tests conducted in-competition.
Of
those, 287 (1.32%) urine tests were classified as either Atypical
Findings (ATFs) or Adverse Analytical Findings (AAFs), which were
subjected to a results management process. It is not disclosed whether
or not those follow-ups led to sanctions.
The World Anti-Doping Agency
(Wada) hopes that by 2016 all Anti-Doping Rule Violations (ADRVs) will
be published.
"With the
methods that we have and under the supervision of the Wada laboratory, I
can tell you that the results are so good that worldwide we have a
positive percentage of about 0.4%," he said.
"For worldwide
doping cases, the majority are social drugs, so if you consider only the
anabolic steroids and EPO and its derivatives then we arrive at
statistics of about 0.04%. So you cannot say we have a doping culture."
It
is estimated to cost $3 million to catch a single steroid cheat and
D'Hooghe says that Fifa's unique financial might puts it in a prime
position to catch dopers.
"I know the price we paid for the
doping control in Brazil to examine all the players," he said. "I think
not all international federations can do that.
"Wada says now
that football gives the example. We are first international federation
to examine all the players. Fifa has invested a lot of money in that and
not everybody can do that."
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