Those dirty, rotten scoundrels
Russia are through to the knockout stages of the Fifa World Cup and the commentator was bubbling and burbling with enthusiasm. Wow, look at the ‘‘tireless’’ Roman Zobnin, ‘‘a bundle of energy in midfield.’’ I was looking at Zobnin and wondering how on earth he became the world’s greatest shuttle runner.
Maybe Zobnin is a clean athlete. Maybe all the Russian footballers are clean athletes. Maybe Russia is the best team at closing down since Spain, ‘‘we didn’t dope’’, won the 2010 World Cup.
Fifa statistics showed that Russia’s team ran further than any other team in its opening two games. They also showed that Russia had the top three individual performers in metres run during the opening games. This prompted Travis Tygart, the CEO of America’s anti-doping agency, to ask Fifa to perform extra tests because of these ‘‘extraordinary performances.’’ Fifa refused to comment on their testing.
But the sad truth of this World Cup is that Russia should not be there and we should not be in Russia. The bidding process was dirty and so is the host nation. Several of their footballers were identified by the McLaren investigation into doping but nothing was done about it.
Several high-ranking people in Fifa who tried to investigate lost their jobs. And two high-ranking people at the top of Russia’s antidoping agency lost their lives. For what? A game of football.
In 2016 Dr Richard McLaren published his report revealing that Russia had sponsored state doping. The level of complicity appeared to go all the way to President Vladimir Putin and to his deputy.
More than 1000 athletes across many sports were revealed to be part of a huge cover-up. Wada seized 3000 suspect samples – 155 of those belonged to football players. At least three of those football players were in the Russia team that beat Egypt.
The findings seemed uncontestable. There were clear physical proofs and there was the testimony of Dr Grigory Rodchenkov, who had been the head of Russia’s anti-doping lab. He defected to America where he is now hiding out as part of the state witness programme.
Since Rodchenkov blew the lid off Russia’s state doping programme, two of his former bosses have died in quick succession. The exchairman of Russia’s anti-doping agency was found dead in February, 2016, of unknown causes. Eleven days later the former executive director of Rusada died of a supposed heart attack.
Rodchenkov told a German TV investigation: ‘‘I received order from [Vitaly[ Mutko [Russia’s minister of sport at the time] that we don’t need positives in football. Don’t touch football, OK? He was my boss and I followed his order.’’
The cover-up was on. Emails confirmed the link between Rodchenkov and Mutko. Several footballers benefited from the swapping of dirty samples for clean ones. Fifa, the governing body of world football, was presented with the evidence. Their reaction appears to be obstructive rather than forensic.
Jiri Dvorak, Fifa’s chief medical officer, was investigating the allegations of state doping of footballers, when he lost his job in November, 2016. Cornel Borbely, the ethics committee chairman of Fifa, was looking into Mutko’s role in the organisation, when he lost his job in May, 2017.
Miguel Maduro, newly appointed to Fifa’s independence governance committee, pointed out that Mutko could no longer serve on the Fifa council now he was deputy prime minister of Russia. It was against Fifa’s rules to allow a government official to serve on the executive committee. Maduro was asked to change his mind, refused, and in May of 2017 he was sacked as the chairman of Fifa’s governance committee after just eight months in the job.
Within the space of 15 months two former heads of Russia’s antidoping agency had been found dead and three Fifa officials, who were looking into doping and Russia’s man at the top, had lost their jobs.
It appeared that Fifa’s president Gianni Infantino, who was later found to have accepted courtesy flights from Russia, did not want anyone looking too closely.
Maduro told the British parliament that Fifa is ‘‘extremely resistant to independent scrutiny, transparency and accountability’’.
That view is confirmed by New Zealander David Howman, the former head of Wada. He says: ‘‘Fifa runs its own programme . . . Wada is not invited to be observers. Fifa have always run a programme that’s compliant, but it’s not what I would call ultimate practice.
‘‘I remain slightly suspicious. There is no independent scrutiny of Fifa.’’
Individual athletes are tested 10-12 times a year. Athletes in team sports are hardly ever tested out of competition. Two are randomly chosen after a game and a corrupt official could fill a bag full with number 10’s to make sure a known clean athlete is tested. Or a country could just cover up dirty samples as McLaren found Russia to have done.
A month before the start of the World Cup, Fifa issued a statement saying: ‘‘Insufficient evidence was found to assert an anti-doping rule violation. Fifa has informed the World Anti-Doping Agency of its conclusions, and Wada in turn has agreed with Fifa’s decision to close the cases.’’
We have not heard Wada’s supposed agreement with Fifa’s conclusions. When McLaren was asked if he thought Fifa had dragged its feet over the investigation into doping in Russian football, he replied: ‘‘Oh yeah.’’
A Fifa insider told Germany’s ARD: ‘‘Gianni Infantino doesn’t want to get in trouble with the Russians. This is more than obvious: If you say anything critical about Russia to Infantino, you are risking your career. It’s quite clear that Infantino wants to protect Russian interests to avoid putting off Russian sponsors.’’
It’s a dirty business. If you have a piece of paper from the sweep with Russia’s name on it, chuck it in the bin. Bet on someone else. Or maybe not. There is US$1 billion to US$3 billion bet on each game in the World Cup and the fixers are in town. The final round of group games is always big business for the acolytes of ‘uncle’ Frankie Chung.
But that’s another story.