French star Pogba faces tough battle ahead amid 4-year doping ban
THE FOUR-year ban given to Paul Pogba, a 2018 World Cup winner with France and formerly the most expensive player in football history, in a doping case that could potentially end his career, has reverberated through the football world.
This ban aligns with penalties in recent similar cases in football, including two cases prosecuted by FIFA from qualifying games for the 2022 World Cup and a UEFA case detailed on Friday by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
In other sports, top-ranked athletes like Grand Slam tennis champion Simona Halep and Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva also find their careers on hold as their legal teams contest four-year bans in doping cases.
Since 2015, a four-year ban has been the norm under the updated World Anti-Doping Code. However, the code also allows for bans to be reduced or overturned if athletes can prove they were not at fault or negligent for a positive test, or if they were contaminated. “The feedback at that time, including among many athletes, was that a more robust default sanction was needed,” the World Anti-Doping Agency said on Friday in a statement.
Pogba will be the latest case going to appeal at CAS, to challenge his ban imposed on Thursday by an Italian sports tribunal for a positive test for DHEA, a steroid precursor.
On Friday, the court in Lausanne, Switzerland, published a detailed ruling in the doping case of an international football player that helps show the narrow path to a reduced ban.
A four-year ban was imposed by UEFA on Bulgaria winger Georgi Yomov, who tested positive for an anabolic steroid at a Europa Conference League game in July 2022 when aged 25.