Dope fines are no good ... FA must start points deductions
TECHNICALLY, the Football Association’s powers over Manchester City for their breach of anti-doping rules are wide-ranging. They could expel them from competition for a season, or indefinitely, they could shut the ground, deduct points, suspend players or force matches to be played behind closed doors.
They won’t. They will administer a fine, probably around £25,000, because that is what their guidelines recommend. Fleetwood Town, charged with a similar offence, will be fined perhaps a smaller sum, as a League One club. And there, encapsulated, is why the FA’s anti-doping rules are a mess.
On three occasions in the last 12 months, City violated the ‘whereabouts’ rule by providing inaccurate or outdated information on the movement of their players for anti-doping purposes; yet the FA stance is so woolly this does not even count as a doping rule violation.
It falls into the wider category of misconduct, which is why the list of FA options is so draconian and extensive. Misconduct is the FA’s catch-all charge covering anything from spitting at an opponent, to criticising a referee, to abusive language or illegal betting.
Recently charged with misconduct: Bacary Sagna (Instagram post disparaging referee Lee Mason), Joey Barton (placing 1,260 bets over a 10year period), West Bromwich Albion (fracas at the end of a match with Watford), Jose Mourinho (abusing a referee in the tunnel at Old Trafford), Andre Gray (homophobic tweets) and Jonjo Shelvey (racial abuse).
The FA will argue that by branding a drug-related offence ‘misconduct’ this allows them to be tougher — except they won’t be. This is why Olympians, and those involved in sports such as athletics — like Jessica Ennis-Hill’s coach, Toni Minichiello — are dismissive of football’s attitude to drug violations.
‘The days when players spent their summer break eating chips are over,’ Minichiello said. ‘They are professional athletes now. Why aren’t all footballers required to state detailed whereabouts 365 days a year? People tell me there is no drug problem in football — but how do you know if you’re not really looking?’
Equally, how can the FA claim to be resolute in their role as the sport’s policeman if they consider a £25,000 fine a sobering reprimand for a Premier League club?
The World Anti-Doping Agency and UK Anti-Doping are not empowered to rule on team violations. Yet how serious are the FA about it? No, they cannot make an example of Manchester City or Fleetwood out of the blue — but, from here, they must ensure that no club will take the whereabouts rule lightly again.
Whatever Fleetwood are fined, even if it is a fifth of City’s punishment, it amounts to a heavier sanction. A deduction of £5,000, say, is far more significant to Fleetwood than £25,000 is to Manchester City. There is a chance Fleetwood could need £5,000 one day. While Sheik Mansour is the owner, City will never be short of £25,000.
To put Premier League wealth into perspective, Danny Simpson, Leicester City right back, recently celebrated his 30th birthday in Manchester. He hired a fashionable boutique hotel in the centre of town, in its entirety, at a cost of £35,000: that was before he paid for a drink. It’s the same hotel Manchester City use to entertain visiting Champions League opponents. And the FA think £25,000 is a deterrent?
THISis why money shouldn’t enter into it. Manchester City and Fleetwood Town may have committed similar offences, but a financial penalty will always be more harshly felt in the lower divisions. So Fleetwood’s punishment is greater. There is a single common currency across football and it is to be found in the league table. A point off in the Premier League is no different from a point off in League One. So, from here, a team whereabouts drug violation should carry a statutory single point deduction; two points for a second offence, and so on. Fair? Yes. Manches-
ter City say the problem was an administrative error and we have no reason to disbelieve them. But we don’t know. It was the same with Rio Ferdinand’s missed test at Manchester United. We note the sincerity of his protestations of innocence, but we cannot say for certain his test would have shown nothing. The only way he could prove that was by turning up; and he didn’t.
Yet, as Ferdinand discovered, football has rules governing the individual. They punish the player, not the team. It is the reason that Dinamo Zagreb’s 2-1 Champions League win over Arsenal stood — even after Arijan Ademi, statistically their best passer that night, failed a drugs test and was banned for four years.
It is different, however, when a club have transgressed. Manchester City and Fleetwood failed their whereabouts tests as teams: this is why there would be no injustice in punishing the collective group.
Indeed, at least one employee at City should feel very grateful football as a sport gets the benefit of the doubt over drugs. This is not Pep Guardiola’s first skirmish in the area. Barcelona, as a team, also failed a whereabouts test while he was in charge — and were fined a mammoth £26,000 by UEFA. Also, while at Brescia in Italy as a player, Guardiola was suspended for four months after testing positive for nandrolone — although he was cleared six years later on appeal. He is fortunate to work in a sport in which people are not dogged by suspicions — that much activity around an individual in athletics, cycling or weightlifting, say, would carry reputational damage.
City’s three offences have taken place over a year, so it is unlikely Guardiola was in charge for all of them. Even so, he should make it his business to ensure the member of his staff responsible is not sloppy again. The club have until next week to plead, and the suggestion is they will admit to administrative oversights and accept their punishment in the knowledge it won’t be great.
That should not be the end of it, though. It is the FA’s duty to halt the complacency and confusion, and to stop equating drug violations with ill-considered tweets.
The alternative is plain: if the FA do not want to marshal football, they should hand the task to somebody who will.