ABSTRACT
As we saw in the previous chapter, professional cycling has a long history of drug use. We also noted that the use of performance-enhancing drugs in professional cycling is widespread and organized and that the sport has long been characterized by a culture of tolerance in relation to drug use. But to what extent is cycling typical of other sports? Is the pattern of drug use in other sports similar to that in professional cycling? Is drug use similarly widespread in other sports? Are similar drugs used? Or do other sports have radically different cultures in relation to drug use? The central object of this chapter is to provide a second, sport-specific case
study of drug use: professional football in Europe. Like professional cycling, professional football is highly commercialized and the financial rewards for sporting success are very great. But the two sports are significantly different in other respects, particularly in terms of the physical demands which they make on participants and in terms of the physical attributes which are required for success in the two sports. A comparison of the two sports may therefore be useful in shedding further light on the conditions which are associated with particular patterns of drug use in particular sports. At the outset we might note that officials of the Fédération Internationale
de Football Association (FIFA) have publicly argued that football is relatively free from drug use. For example, FIFA president Sepp Blatter (2006: 1) has argued that, ‘from current data, the incidence of doping in football seems to be very low and we have no evidence of systematic doping in football’. Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) in England, has similarly stated that, ‘I’m almost certain that we have a clean sheet over performance-enhancing drugs’ (The Times, 19 October 2005). Articles co-authored by FIFA’s chief medical officer, members of FIFA’s Doping Control and Medical Committees and the editor of the British Journal of Sports Medicine, also reflect the belief that performance-enhancing drugs are rarely used by footballers (Dvorak, Graf-Baumann et al., 2006; Dvorak, McCrory et al., 2006). FIFA officials base their claims about low levels of drug use in football on
the relatively low incidence of positive tests from players. Convinced of the rigour of their drug testing programme, they have cited a number of
possible explanations for these ‘favourable’ test results. First, FIFA argue that: ‘[t]he stringent drug testing programme occurs during the entire football season in most countries’; second they argue that ‘football players worldwide understand that prohibited substances in sport will neither improve their physical performance nor their football specific skills and hence are reluctant to use agents that are not effective and subject to possible sanction’; and third, they suggest that ‘ongoing education campaigns by FIFA for doctors, administrators, officials and players have encouraged a drug-free culture in football’ (Dvorak, McCrory et al., 2006: 58). A fourth possible explanation, though one that FIFA quickly dismissed as ‘unlikely’, is that football’s drug testing programme is ‘insufficient to detect drug use’ (ibid.). In this chapter we shall critically examine these claims by drawing upon,
and seeking to triangulate, data derived not just from the results of drug testing – which as we have noted earlier are an extremely poor index of drug use – but also from the three other major sources of information which we identified in Chapter 7 as providing useful information on the extent of drug use in sport: investigative journalism, including the writings and testimonials of athletes and others involved in sport; government investigations; and surveys. As we noted in Chapter 7, each of these data sources raises methodological difficulties of one kind or another; however, taken together, they can help us to assess more adequately the prevalence of the use of illicit drugs in football, and provide an indication of the success of the anti-doping programmes which have been implemented by national and international governing bodies of football. Let us begin our analysis by a brief examination of the history of drug use in professional football.
