Football: Toure positive gets six month ban, backdated.
No_Ta_Doctor
Posts: 14,653
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2011 ... -month-ban
Much as I like Toure, and believe this was a case of an accidental (though probably negligent) positive, this is an absurd ruling.
Anti doping in football is seriously flawed. This was the first positive test in the premier league in seven years, since Mutu was busted for coke. Even if there isn't a major problem with PEDs you'd expect to be turning up a few positives for recreational drugs in a group of multi-millionaires dedicated to some serious clubbing and partying.
No premier league player has ever been banned for knowingly taking a PED. There isn't a single case where a player has been caught and they haven't accepted an excuse that it was accidental.
Right now the benefits of PEDs massively outweigh the risks. You're unlikely to get caught and if you do you probably won't lose more than a season at most, probably less if they don't catch you with a needle full of epo. The penalty is about the same as a serious football injury, a cruciate ligament say, the sort of injury that every player faces every match.
A bad joke, but £2.2 billion revenue in the Premier League says the punchline isn't likely to change.
Much as I like Toure, and believe this was a case of an accidental (though probably negligent) positive, this is an absurd ruling.
Anti doping in football is seriously flawed. This was the first positive test in the premier league in seven years, since Mutu was busted for coke. Even if there isn't a major problem with PEDs you'd expect to be turning up a few positives for recreational drugs in a group of multi-millionaires dedicated to some serious clubbing and partying.
No premier league player has ever been banned for knowingly taking a PED. There isn't a single case where a player has been caught and they haven't accepted an excuse that it was accidental.
Right now the benefits of PEDs massively outweigh the risks. You're unlikely to get caught and if you do you probably won't lose more than a season at most, probably less if they don't catch you with a needle full of epo. The penalty is about the same as a serious football injury, a cruciate ligament say, the sort of injury that every player faces every match.
A bad joke, but £2.2 billion revenue in the Premier League says the punchline isn't likely to change.
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Errr dont be a hater, there have been no positives and no bans becasue theyre not doing it.
Only cycling and athletics have any use for PEDS, the big sports like football rugby golf and tennis are drug free.
in anycase footballers arent prone to injury.
(sarcasm for those not aware)0 -
the scary thing is no positives in la liga.eating parmos since 1981
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Cal_Stewart wrote:the scary thing is no positives in la liga.
Indeed.Warning No formatter is installed for the format0 -
All Road/ Gravel: tbcWinter: tbcMTB: tbcRoad: tbc"Look at the time...." "he's fallen like an old lady on a cruise ship..."0
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AndyRAC wrote:http://www.sportingintelligence.com/2010/04/19/revealed-english-fa-has-handed-out-24-drugs-bans-since-mutu-190401/
Hmm......mainly 'recreational' drugs....
Thanks for that, interesting reading.
60 positives in 6 years then, though that stretches all the way into non-league football....Warning No formatter is installed for the format0 -
Testing is very rare in football and when it happens, they don't scan for everything. For example, there are no blood tests. Out of competition testing is light. Look what happened when the testers came for Rio Ferdinand and he fled/went shopping.
Imagine if the testers showed up on Etna and Vinokourov ran away in order to buy some tourist souvenirs.
But I don't like comparing sports. If football wants to have sloppy standards let them but we need to remember cycling has extensive and severe controls because it's got a rampant culture of doping.0 -
Why are all these names secret? It seems like the recreational drugs are the secret ones. Is that why? Bet Mutu is wishing his had been kept secret!0
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Kléber wrote:
But I don't like comparing sports. If football wants to have sloppy standards let them but we need to remember cycling has extensive and severe controls because it's got a rampant culture of doping.
I think there is an interesting comparison though. For the most part cycling deserves its poor reputation, but at the same time it has the most stringent controls of any sport. The statistics on doping in football seem to point, as you say, to sloppy standards, but is this by accident or design? Is football deliberately not looking into the dark corners in order to keep its reputation?Warning No formatter is installed for the format0 -
No sport wants doping controls. People want a clean sport but above all a clean image. Cycling never chose to have all these tests, haematocrit counting, vampire wake-up calls and repetitive out of competition testing, this has been forced on the sport because of the endless tales of doping.
If football suffered a big scandal then you'd begin to see the same demands for more testing but right now it's not there. Same with tennis and rugby too.0 -
Kléber wrote:No sport wants doping controls. People want a clean sport but above all a clean image. Cycling never chose to have all these tests, haematocrit counting, vampire wake-up calls and repetitive out of competition testing, this has been forced on the sport because of the endless tales of doping.
If football suffered a big scandal then you'd begin to see the same demands for more testing but right now it's not there. Same with tennis and rugby too.
And how likely is that? Everything would be covered up.....
."..doping in football - don't be silly......, we're the cleanest sport around"All Road/ Gravel: tbcWinter: tbcMTB: tbcRoad: tbc"Look at the time...." "he's fallen like an old lady on a cruise ship..."0 -
You'd need some kind of scandal, like:
- fit young players suddenly collapsing and dying from heart failure; or
- a list of names being found as part of a police bust of a doping ring; or
- a completely random team from a country with high profile dopers in other sports suddenly running the legs off all the other teams and walking off with a major international trophy; or
- a top international evading a dope test in a ridiculously blatant way
before there might be any whiff of suspicion around football. Hang on a minute....0 -
I thought this topic would come up today...
i recall someone on twitter suggesting fairly clearly that there was a reason why Ryan Giggs had managed to successfully play top level football until nearly 40 - obviously referring to PED's... No-one seemed to spot it and react to it but I suspect that is blissful ignorance on the part of football fans.
Sadly as a fan of cycling I have no such innocence.
When a lot of us watch the champions league final watch the amount of pressing that the Barcelona Players do to the opposition when they lose the ball - it's unbelievable. Having said that the greatest player in the world has been jacked up on HGH for an awful long time and it has been publicised quite widely so sustaining that kind of effort is totally possible.0 -
his HGH is because he's a dwarfeating parmos since 1981
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it's not just going to affect his height is it?0
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There's not much cycling content in this thread... more suited to cake stop maybe?
Are we not shooting ourselves in the foot talking about doping in other sports (on a pro cycling forum) and then complaining about how much doping is associated with cycling?0 -
Just googled 'messi HGH'. The fourth article returned was on www.buyclenbuterol.co.uk
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He's not on HGH anymore though (officially).
Barca's agreement when he signed in his mid teens was that they would finance the HGH as he was less than 5 feet tall but I thought it was only over a couple of years. Once he got to the dizzy heights of 5'5" they stopped.0 -
I cant remember where so ignore me if this is rubbish. But the Prem league came out and said they didnt test for EPO etc due to the expense of testing it and similar endurance based naughties0
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The alleged reason that Puerto was so conveniently shelved was that the presiding judge had some close relationship with Real Madrid, who employed some fairly expensive lawyers to conveniently keep it out of the public interest. Fuentes always protested that cyclists were only a small proportion of his client base which also included footballers, athletes, tennis players and motorsports...whose names unsurprisingly never seemed to have reached the public domain.
The testing in football is akin to it's general governance and assurance principles as defined by three wise monkeys...Make mine an Italian, with Campagnolo on the side..0 -
Arsene Wenger alleged one the players Arsenal bought from Italy showed tell tail signs of EPO use.
Also history of drugs in football does go way back, West Germany are believed to have won the 1954 world cup final against Hungary while on amphetamines.0 -
BigMat wrote:You'd need some kind of scandal, like:
- a completely random team from a country with high profile dopers in other sports suddenly running the legs off all the other teams and walking off with a major international trophy; or
.... Hang on a minute....
WHo is this team to which you are referring? Is it Spain? But i thought they were generally good and not a particularly 'random' team. Or do you mean Turkey in Euro 2008?0 -
The Spanish/league team has always been very suspect.
Just go dig up information regarding certain high profile doctors working/consulted for Real Madrid/Baracalona over the past few years.0 -
maybe its just me being silly for thinking such a thing.......but PEDs in cycling / endurance sports have a definite positive effect and almost guarantee an improvement. in football / rugby etc.........not as much.
using myself as an example, taking EPO will definitely make me a better cyclist than if i wasn't taking EPO. i'm absolutely terrible at football. is there a drug which will make me more accurate with passes and shooting? i might be able to run for longer, but i'll still not be able to hit a barn door with a shot.
maybe this is why they seem to not bother which such stringent tests?0 -
They make a massive difference in football/rugby imo.
1 team not running out of steam closing everyone down over and over its simply going to murder the opposition if they are of similar skill level.0 -
B3rnieMac wrote:maybe its just me being silly for thinking such a thing.......but PEDs in cycling / endurance sports have a definite positive effect and almost guarantee an improvement. in football / rugby etc.........not as much.
using myself as an example, taking EPO will definitely make me a better cyclist than if i wasn't taking EPO. i'm absolutely terrible at football. is there a drug which will make me more accurate with passes and shooting? i might be able to run for longer, but i'll still not be able to hit a barn door with a shot.
maybe this is why they seem to not bother which such stringent tests?
EPO and the like won't make a Championship level player into a Premiership star, but it will make a player perform to their standard for longer and more often. So a player who was good for 75 minutes in 35 games a season, can become good for 90 minutes in 50 games a season.
A very high proportion of goals are scored in the last ten minutes.Twitter: @RichN950 -
I don't believe there has been a culture of performance enhancing drugs in the English game. I don't believe there was even performance enhancing training or diet until relatively recently. Cycling however has been steeped in dope for the best part of 50 years, thats why it's in such a mess.
Football has changed rapidly in the last decade due to sums of money involved and the the influence of foreign player. Part of this is the use of drugs. This will continue to flourish until the governing bodies wake up.
Toure took his wife's diet pills to manage his weight.
How can that possibly be anything other than performance enhancing?
He is also calling his wife fat. That can't end well.“New York has the haircuts, London has the trousers, but Belfast has the reason!0 -
Old but interesting article, surprised it's still up there considering some of the allegations...
http://www.german-times.com/index.php?o ... &Itemid=74"what's it pertaining?"0 -
MrTapir wrote:BigMat wrote:You'd need some kind of scandal, like:
- a completely random team from a country with high profile dopers in other sports suddenly running the legs off all the other teams and walking off with a major international trophy; or
.... Hang on a minute....
WHo is this team to which you are referring? Is it Spain? But i thought they were generally good and not a particularly 'random' team. Or do you mean Turkey in Euro 2008?
Its a country where top athletes are prone to falling off motorbikes. Spain would do though, although they don't tick the "random" box.0 -
rebs wrote:I cant remember where so ignore me if this is rubbish. But the Prem league came out and said they didnt test for EPO etc due to the expense of testing it and similar endurance based naughties
I'm pretty sure I'd read that, too. Poor, underfunded football...
And as for PEDs in other sports not being as helpful as in Cycling, I have that argument with all the Football fans in my office. Imagine this scenario - you can earn £5,000-£10,000 a week with a Championship team; or take something that will help you run around the pitch faster for longer and help you have the lucidity to make the correct pass at the end of the game while everyone around you is knackered, and then earn £50,000-£100,000 a week in the Premiership. What do you think the average footballer would do?
How about a Tennis player being able to hit a ball harder and chase down shots at the end of a 5-setter? And don't even get me started on the size of Rugby players these days... ...Don't get me wrong, I love loads of sports but if anyone thinks that Cycling is the only one with PED issues, then they must be very naive.I was only joking when I said
by rights you should be bludgeoned in your bed0 -
BigMat wrote:Its a country where top athletes are prone to falling off motorbikes.
This is the website address for the Greek Football Federation (genuinely, no joke):
www.epo.gr
You can't write comedy like that.Twitter: @RichN950
