How prevalent are drugs in soccer?

“It’s easier to find a confessing Mafioso than a confessing soccer professional“, according to Raffaele Guariniello, the prosecutor who uncovered evidence of systematic abuse of medication at Juventus Turin, the famous Italian soccer club. There are drugs from the eighth division up to the Champions League. How prevalent are they?

It’s 3:30 p.m. The country inn „Waldesruh“ at the bank of the Traun is still closed. The former drug-dealer Stefan Matschiner is the most famous son of the village. The owner opens earlier for him. Matschiner took drugs as a track and field athlete himself. Later he sold drugs to other professional athletes. The „Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung“ called him „Spider of the web.“ His most successful athlete was Bernhard Kohl, who placed third at the Tour de France in 2008. On March 30 in 2009, the police took Matschiner to prison. He took a break from high-competition sports to write a revealing book.

The Austrian doesn’t want to reveal how many soccer players he provided with drugs or where the players are from to protect his former customers. Matschiner’s official answer: „Between 2003 and 2009, I supplied drugs to several soccer players from various European countries.“ Matschiner’s players took testosterone and the blood-doping substance EPO. Some of his most successful clients took part in the Champions League qualifications. Matschiner talks about doping like others talk about a day at the office. He has no scruples. „Why should I have regret? It’s the system. I did my business to the best of my knowledge.“

Doping soccer players are common. Almost every other day soccer players fail drug tests: on May 9, Vezyridis from Greece; on May 7, Dakson from Brazil; on April 27, Kornilenko from Belarus. Along with it come the big scandals: Juventus Turin has been using drugs systematically with the use of the blood-doping substance EPO labeled “very likely” in court. According to French newspaper „Le Monde“, rumor has it that the Spanish doping physician Eufemiano Fuentes looked after Real Madrid, FC Barcelona, Betis Sevilla, and FC Valencia. Barcelona sued the paper. Le Monde’s Head of Sports couldn’t provide the court with any physical evidence to substantiate his claim and was ordered to pay €15,000. Fuentes didn’t say a word in court. „I got death threats three times. There will be no fourth time“, he told Le Monde at the time.

Star of German Bundesliga – a client of Fuentes?
Trusted sources tell this paper too that there have been soccer players visiting Fuentes. Among these players is someone who later played in the German Bundesliga. The name can’t be revealed, because these claims have not been substantiated. This newspaper has access to a small portion of the documents regarding Fuentes. They mention only cyclists. Did the Spanish justice ever investigate the names of any soccer players? Today Eufemiano Fuentes lives on the Canary Islands. In 2011, he still worked as a physician for the third-division soccer club UD Las Palmas. Allegedly, he continues to supply athletes with drugs. Fuentes didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Even German history isn’t free from scandals. The 1954 World Champions in Bern had Pervitin in their veins, an amphetamine often used by German soldiers in World War II. Sports historians like Erik Eggers are convinced that the Germans took forbidden substances in 1954 – although players and coaches have denied it for years. The German Democratic Republic doped its players systematically for decades. This is documented in observations made by the Staatssicherheit, the secret service of the GDR. Many local clubs in East Germany used Oral-Turinabol, a special anabolic steroid developed in the GDR. In West Germany, the stimulant Captagon was used frequently in the 1980s, several coaches and players said in the media.

How prevalent are drugs in soccer in 2012? „It’s similar to other sports, such as track and field or triathlon“, says Stefan Matschiner. „It’s a latent problem, but it was an even bigger problem in the eighties and nineties. Because analytics have gotten better you can’t do that much stuff anymore.“ Organized team doping seems unrealistic to Matschiner. „I heard of only one case about a team from southern Europe“, says Matschiner. „I think it’s more common that good friends organize themselves to get an extra treatment from physicians outside the team.“ Matschiner himself sold drugs to players who were attempting to take a permanent position from their teammates. Did it help? „I never heard anyone complaining. Everyone came back for more.“

No intelligent doping tests in Bundesliga
Why do so few players fail doping tests? Because testing in soccer isn’t intelligent. „Only the dumb ones fail“ holds true for soccer. In the German Bundesliga there are no blood tests, so blood doping can’t be proven. Players in Germany are tested on an average just every third year. Normal professionals are tested only at official training dates. Only members of the national team get tested at home. There are blood tests at the European Championships this summer in Poland and Ukraine, but the training tests have shortcomings. A player has a window of 60 minutes to appear for his drug test. That’s enough to distort the test.

Despite all that, there are still physicians and coaches who say there are no drugs in soccer. „I say with conviction that no one dopes in soccer“, Borussia Dortmund’s coach Jürgen Klopp said three years ago. The reasoning behind this argument: doping is no use in soccer. Stefan Matschiner says this theory is „complete bullshit.“ „If I enhance my stamina, I have the strength to perform other skills better at the end of a game.“

The Sports Institute at the University of Mainz is just a few hundred meters from Bruchweg, which is the former home of the Bundesliga Club Mainz05. Antje Dresen, a sociologist and researcher at the University of Mainz, doesn’t see the players as the sole culprit. Instead, she looks at the whole culture. What causes a soccer player’s decision to start taking drugs? „In soccer, it’s important to get better every day. Every week the next game is the most important. Meanwhile, individual resources are limited“, Dresen says. „Doping is an all-purpose weapon against the pressure, which weighs heavily on the players.“

Most soccer players don’t have a good education. They have to make a lot of money until they reach their mid-thirties. In addition, there is competition amongst players, the performance-related calculation of premiums, and public pressure. One example is the German soccer magazine Kicker, which grades every player game by game. „A soccer player who just concentrates on his sport is caught in a doping-trap“, says Dresen.

From Antje Dresens window you can see the Institute of Sports Medicine. Perikles Simon works there. He is one of the most famous doping scientists in Germany. What does the ever-rising pressure mean for the health of the players, Simon asks himself. „You cannot increase the financial pressure ad infinitum and at the same time assume that players will keep their health in mind“, says Simon. „If teams like Juventus Turin have the power to dope their players systematically, the pressure seems so insurmountable that players don’t have a chance to defend themselves. These are inhumane working conditions.“ First and foremost, players with a good technique, but with low stamina, are vulnerable to drugs, Simon suggests. The game has gotten a lot faster in recent years. The pressure rises to be 100%.

As for systematic team doping, everyone speaks of Juventus Turin. „Juve“ won the Champions League in 1996. Two years later, Raffaele Guariniello, a Juve-fan, started his investigation. He produced 40,000 pages of documents and called stars like Zidane or Cannavaro to the witness stand. In the end, Guariniello proved systematic abuse of drugs. This is perhaps the most telling and spectacular case to date.

The prosecutor’s office is on Corso Vittorio Emmanuele II, one of the most important streets in Turin. You can find the red-bricked Palace of Justice at the end of this impressive street. Raffaele Guariniello has his office on the seventh floor, guarded by two policemen and three secretaries. In Italy, Guariniello is a star. He is 71, but he still works like an animal. While speaking to the reporter, he signs documents, answers his telephone. „In soccer I got to know the Omertá“, Guariniello says. Nonetheless, four years after his investigation started, the court opened the case on January 31, 2002.

Thirty-nine days in court and two-and-a-half years were needed for the decision: team-physician Riccardo Agricola was sentenced to 22 months in jail. Juventus entered caveat; and the third case was abandoned because the statute of limitations expired in 2007. Juve didn’t get punished, but certain facts were proven: the team doctor used 281 different medications and a court expert said that it is “very likely” that Juve distributed the blood-doping substance EPO to the players.

Five years later, Guariniello continues to investigate. Currently, he is trying to solve a couple of mysterious deaths. Italian soccer players are diagnosed with Lou-Gehrigs syndrome 24 times more often than normal people. Doping could be a reason.

Sport physicians try again and again to push the medical boundaries. One well-known example of the use of too much painkillers resulted in former Werder offender, Ivan Klasnic, suing his team doctor Götz Dimanski for more than a million Euros. His kidney failed, and Klasnic says Dimanski didn’t see this coming and worsened it by giving Klasnic too many painkillers. Both parties have been waiting for a judgment for four years. Neither Klasnic nor Dimanski wanted to comment on the ongoing investigation.

When searching for doping in soccer on the internet, you encounter people who talk about stimulants and steroids. These people play soccer for fun. One amateur player wrote us. He played for a regional representative team in Bavaria, and he took stimulants to get the best results. „Sometimes, the effect was awesome. But the night after a game I was really fucked up.“ After initially agreeing to meet with the reporter, he failed to return any phone calls.

Mischa Kläber underlines the statements of this amateur player. The sport sociologist from the University of Darmstadt wrote his dissertation on this topic and talked to four amateur players who took doping substances. In one case, the whole team used ephedrine. This makes players more aggressive, faster, and more alert.

Kläber discusses different substaces: speed; cocaine; and one case of nandrolone, which helps to build muscle. A player took nandrolone after a cruciate rupture and knee surgery in order to get fit as soon as possible. „Ephedrine and presciption painkillers are really common in lower leagues“, Kläber says. Stefan Matschiner had a client in lower leagues. The client took stimulants as well.

Doping in soccer is not an isolated incident. It is part of the system.