13 FOOTBALLERS FAIL DRUG TESTS
But FA hide identities to help with their rehab
THIRTEEN footballers have tested positive for social drugs since 2012 but their identities were kept secret by the Football Association.
The governing body guard the privacy of players who fail tests for recreational drugs like cocaine and ecstasy on non-match days, arguing it helps support their rehabilitation.
Sportsmail revealed last week that Stoke’s new striker Saido Berahino tested positive for a social drug in September when at West Bromwich Albion and served an eight-week ban. Albion fans were told at the time the 23-year-old had been left out of the team to work on his fitness.
The FA are one of the few governing bodies to test players for recreational drugs out of competition and hope to conduct almost 5,000 tests a season by 2018.
In the year before he died, President John F Kennedy addressed the students of Yale University. ‘The great enemy of truth,’ he told them, ‘is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest — but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.’
The FA, we now know, feed us both: lies and myths. Lies about players who fail drug tests, myths about the spotlessness of their sport and the individuals within. The guardians of our game have been compromised by commercialism. They are pretend police, handing down sanctions but then conspiring to airbrush those blemishes from the proffered product.
The revelation that the FA have covered up 13 failed tests for recreational drug use over four seasons leaves them exposed. They will claim only kindness as their motivation — the offer of counselling and rehabilitation for offenders and the need for this to be undertaken in private.
Yet, equally, they get a kickback, too. What if one of the failed tests involves an England player — even a potential international, such as Saido Berahino, who has made 47 appearances at age-group level? Isn’t he, possibly, a commercial asset to the FA — one that might be harmed if it was made public that he was a drug user, even only for fun?
Here is where the FA are conflicted. Just like the clubs, and the league, they have a financial interest to protect. Yet how can an organisation taking the moral high ground on recreational drugs take the low road on lying if caught? That is what we now know happens. The FA allow the clubs and the miscreant to lie, to deliberately deceive the supporters with a cover tale of injury or illness.
It is a shameful deal, one that entirely undermines any ethical inspiration. If the FA are tough on drugs, why aren’t they equally driven to see the process through to the end? What does football have to hide, and why?
Let’s start with the basic premise of out- of- competition testing for recreational drugs. Football and rugby are the only sports that do it.
The FA’s position is puzzling because it plainly comes from a purely moral standpoint. Among the banned substances are ‘cannabinoids, for example hashish and marijuana’. Anybody with even the smallest knowledge in this area will attest that cannabi- noids are the opposite of performing- enhancing. They deaden athletic impulses, they promote lethargy. They are not the same as the drugs Who drummer Keith Moon would fondly describe as being ‘in an upwardly direction’. Amphetamine, cocaine, MDMA. Promoters of energy, aggression, extreme confidence.
Hardly likely to lead to excellence in performance, but it is possible to see how these recreational drugs might be considered enhancers. Yet the FA also ban LSD, a powerful hallucinogenic. If you fancy a social experiment in utter fruitlessness, try to play football on acid: see how far you get.
So the FA make a moral judgment, until a player tests positive, when all morality goes out the window. At that moment, the FA begin to dissemble. They hide the verdict and enter into a conspiracy of misdirection with the player and his club. And the reason they give, is counselling and perhaps rehabilitation, which needs to take place away from the public eye.
NoWlet’s get one thing straight. not every young person who indulges in recreational drug use is suffering some psychological issue. Most are merely making a lifestyle choice, albeit an illegal and rather unprofessional one, in the case of athletes.
Berahino allegedly tested positive for MDMA. So would a lot of people on Monday morning. They don’t all need counselling because they know what they are doing and are in control, however much society disapproves of their choices. Berahino was not under a bridge with a needle in his arm. So just because it’s not your lifestyle or your experience, it doesn’t mean counselling is required.
Berahino needed to be told that MDMA is on the banned list, and, for this and other reasons, should not be part of his life. That’s not counselling; that’s good advice. It could as well have come from his manager at West Brom, Tony Pulis, as any mental health expert. Don’t take E, son, it’s illegal and not conducive to playing football. now, serve your ban and don’t be so stupid in future. And that’s it; done.
news of the positive test should be released — he has transgressed as a professional athlete, so this is not a private matter — and the ban clearly explained. no need for a cover story, no need for lies and thus no chance of embarrassing revelations down the line.
Everything out in the open is healthy. If a player is truly troubled and needs to enter rehab, that is different because treatment is ongoing. But secrecy and counselling for an old-fashioned weekender? As Amy Winehouse might have said: no, no, no.
The FA’s policy is counter-productive for another reason. It gives innocent athletes the look of drug cheats. If we know that footballers are disappearing from the game for two or three months, and the real reason is being hushed up, then routine injuries appear suspicious. Think of England players who have missed significant periods in recent seasons: Jack Wilshere, Daniel Sturridge. not every victim gets carried off on a stretcher, but after this, unless one does, will the whispering start?
Take Andy Carroll. on August 18, he came on for West Ham in a Europa League game. He lasted the match, and, despite showing no obvious ill-effects, did not play again for more than three months. There has been no question at any stage that Carroll, Wilshere or Sturridge have suffered anything other than injury. Yet, suddenly, the FA’s actions might arouse suspicion.
Tomorrow, England manager Gareth Southgate is going to check on Carroll in the match with West Brom. He is potentially an asset to England. Meaning those passing judgment also have much to gain from secrecy.
That is the problem: so many vested interests. To implement a policy of openness around failed drugs tests would require the support of the FA, the clubs, the leagues and the PFA. All have reasons — many commercial — to buy into the lying game instead. They build these myths, these legends, and then they sell them.
And some — not a huge number, because 13 positives in four seasons is far from an epidemic — are sold under false pretences. But that’s all right, because it’s none of your business. It’s their business, don’t you know — and that’s about all it is.