We seem to offer a free pass for positive tests in football. Isn't that strange?
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By RIATH AL-SAMARRAI
Published: 07:00 EST, 21 December 2024 | Updated: 07:15 EST, 21 December 2024
There's a tattoo on Mykhailo Mudryk’s throat that has drawn attention in the past week. It reads: ‘Talent ain’t enough.’ With that same neck now on the line, what we really need to know is whether talent had a little help.
We’ll say at the outset that Mudryk’s provisional suspension for a failed drugs test is not the same as being found guilty of an offence and, in turn, that is not the same as deliberately cheating. We’re not remotely close to those conclusions – there hasn’t even been a charge from the Football Association at this stage.
But Mudryk denies intentionally using a banned substance. And of course he said that.
If he’s true to his words that he has ‘not done anything wrong’, then you’re not going to admit to what you didn’t do. But, and this is a sticky bit, if an athlete cheats, how often do their hands go up?
You’ll see the point I’m making – denials can mean something or nothing. Same goes for a club’s backing, which Mudryk has, because Chelsea are supporting their man.
His manager, Enzo Maresca, says he believes in Mudryk’s innocence, that he trusts him, and we might assume he has more information to go on than the rest of us. I’m not thinking so much here about observations on character and decency, because that often isn’t relevant in doping conversations. Goodness, Justin Gatlin is one of the most courteous men I’ve met in sport. But what about real information? The information that would give validity to Maresca’s trust?
Mykhailo Mudryk has been provisionally suspended after he was hit with a positive drugs test
Manager Enzo Maresca and Chelsea have opted to stand behind their young winger
The Chelsea star has a neck tattoo which reads: 'Talent ain't enough'. What we need to know is whether talent had any help
If he’s a diligent man, and all indications this season suggest Maresca is, then he has sought the data to underpin his confidence - the precise substance being one and another being possible sources for how it accidentally got into the sample of an £88million asset.
We understand the substance in question is meldonium, which can improve endurance, but Mudryk has not confirmed that, nor has he said publicly if it came from something he may have eaten, or if there is any suspicion of faulty testing. That’s mostly shrouded in the confidentiality of the process. And fair enough. But Maresca might also want to know the concentration levels in his player’s urine and the proximity of clean tests to the adverse finding.
Because those are big details that usually shape a defence in these matters.
If Maresca knows them, he will have a fuller picture to study. Maybe he has indeed built that level of understanding, and maybe he hasn’t, but my suspicion towards the latter was given room to breathe on Wednesday, when he said he didn’t know if the test was collected on international duty with Ukraine or here in the UK. On Thursday, he added he didn’t know the status of Mudryk’s B sample.
Again, that might be the tap-dance of speaking in public on private matters. Or, alternatively, he actually doesn’t know much and is just a trusting person.
But we can rest assured that it isn’t Maresca’s place to decide a verdict. That falls elsewhere, in this instance the FA in conjunction with UK Anti-Doping, who will follow the path of testing his B sample, in the likelihood Mudryk requests it, before the FA decide on what charges follow, if any. Then it goes to the lawyers.
It’s a depressing saga and a complicated one. Doping cases always are. They are messy, fraught with loopholes, hard to prove to absolute outcomes. And for football, they are more common than most are still willing to accept. Maresca, for one, believes football doesn’t have a troubling relationship with drugs, which is interesting.
He joined Juventus in 2000 and stayed for four years. In that time, Edgar Davids, his team-mate, tested positive for the steroid nandrolone, denied it was ingested intentionally, and served a four-month ban. Serie A was utterly riddled with similar cases in that same span and Juve in particular were not long removed from accusations around the 1996 Champions League final - Ajax players and staff have been vocal in their suspicion that they were cheated by dopers.
Enzo Maresca has not given some details when asked - either he is being private or he grenuinely doesn't know
Football has had plenty of positive drugs test and the insistence is always that it is an accident. Isn't it strange that football gets a free pass?
Pep Guardiola endured a six-year legal battle and was eventually exonerated after initially being handed a suspended prison sentence
Andre Onana insisted a mistake led to his positive test and a nine-month ban - a version of events that UEFA accepted
When Maresca was asked on Wednesday for a comparison between then and now, this is what he said: ‘I was waiting for this question. I think football was clean in that time and it's clean in this time. So I don't think there is a big difference between my time at Juventus and now.’
It always baffles me how the game is perceived in these discussions, compared to, say, athletics, cycling and boxing. But here’s a little thought exercise: pick a starting XI for footballers who returned a positive sample. The choices are so plentiful you can select a star side and mostly use them in their correct positions.
For instance, we could put Andre Onana in goal (Furosemide, 2020), with Frank de Boer (nandrolone, 2001), Jaap Stam (nandrolone, 2001) Kolo Toure (Bendroflumethiazide, 2011) and Abel Xavier (dianabol, 2004) at the back. I’d give Davids (nandrolone, 2001) a run in midfield with Pep Guardiola (nandrolone, 2001), Paul Pogba (dehydroepiandrosterone, 2023), Fred (hydrochlorothiazide, 2015) and Mudryk, with Diego Maradona (ephedrine, 1994) alone up top.
Each of them denied having knowingly committed a wrongdoing and none was found to have intentionally gamed the system. Guardiola, for his part, was exonerated after a six-year legal battle that initially saw him handed a suspended prison sentence. But it’s a striking list, right?
Perhaps they were all truly unfortunate, or at worst negligent in scrutinising their supplements and meals. And we might also add here that contamination cases are often a legitimate accident – that was spelled out to me by one of the most prominent figures in the anti-doping fight this week.
But there was also a familiar laugh about the notion that football would be wildly different to other sports when it comes to corner cutting. Because we’re long past the myth of a skills-based game not needing to visit such dark roads – it’s a recovery game. It’s about being ready to go again every few days. It’s about playing for contracts in stifling pressure.
And yet somehow there is an absence of curiosity around the number and nature of cases that do crop up. The reputational death of a positive test in some sports just doesn’t exist when circumstances are similar in football.
Presently, we seem to offer a free pass. And isn’t that strange?
The reputational death of a positive test in football does not exist like it does in other sports
Mudryk has not yet been found guilty and even if he was, it wouldn't necessarily mean it was intentional
Time will tell where Mudryk travels from here and what specifics emerge. But if Maresca was spot on with one thing this week, it was when he said: ‘These kind of things happened in the past, they happen now and they are going to happen in the future.’
They will. And we can all decide if that amounts to a long series of accidents or a problem. He doesn’t think so, but I’d argue the logic is contaminated.
Amorim's rash language
Ruben Amorim has been praised for the firmness with which he handled the Marcus Rashford situation but were the miss-steps committed solely by the player?
Dropping him from Manchester United’s derby win over City was fine - it was merited by form and vindicated by the result. But the number of times Amorim has spoken critically about Rashford, about his application, his lifestyle, is excessive.
Doubtless, they were all honest answers to questions. And yet it is easy enough to see why Rashford would eventually snap, as he did this week by saying publicly that he wants a new challenge.
We might instinctively think he should have knuckled down and kept his mouth shut, but now that the paste is out of the tube, United could soon be staring at a weakened negotiating position for any sale.
That is primarily on the forward and his response. But he wasn’t the only rash figure involved in creating this situation.
Ruben Amorim may have weakened Man United's negotiating position with his comments about Marcus Rashford
I went to watch Seb Coe launch his manifesto for the IOC presidential elections - it would be a travesty if he is kept out of power for speaking the truth
Don't keep out Coe
I went to see Sebastian Coe this week as he launched his manifesto for the presidential elections at the International Olympic Committee.
He has aggressively positioned himself as the reform candidate and the status quo, led by the ludicrous Thomas Bach, won’t be fond of what he’s implying about the state of a dictatorial organisation.
That’s a problem – they are the ones who will vote on it in March. It would be a travesty if the best man for the job is kept out for the crime of being right.