High profile cases of unabated drug use have rocked sports such as cycling and athletics in recent years while football, one of the world’s most popular sports, has stayed relatively clean on that front.
Dvorak too believes that the problem of drug abuse is a non-starter when it comes to football.
“I am confident that there is no systematic doping in football,” he told FIFA’s official website. “There is no systematic doping culture in football. I am confident of this.”
“Of course there are individual cases, for sure. We do more than 30,000 sampling procedures every year, and we have between 70 to 90 positive cases, most of them for marijuana and cocaine and we have also anabolic steroids, but these are individual cases.”
FIFA in February launched biological profiling, similar to the biological passport that was introduced in cycling. It was tested at the Confederations Cup and will be used at next year’s World Cup in Brazil as well. The method is also set to be adopted by other sports such as tennis in the coming months.
Dvorak also went on to add about how FIFA is trying to rope in other organizations so that a larger number of players can be covered under this profiling net.
“And now we are also in discussion with UEFA and other confederations to start this biological profile in the confederations so all the top players will be registered,” he said. “And if we have a suspicion then we go into the more intelligent and targeted testing.”
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