Pep - Doping (?) | Are PEDs being used by footballers

Classical Mechanic said:
I’m not sure that legalising doping would result in harm reduction though as it would with narcotics. Most of the harm from illegal drugs comes from unregulated manufacturing and the inability for end users to regulate dose.

The PEDS that athletes use are already pharmaceutical grade, prescribed by dosed by real doctors.
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That is actually an excellent point but I do hear a lot of stories about some of the shady practices the doctors who prescribe these substances give out and even assuming they are okay there is definitely a huge black market for PEDS and testosterone treatments. What you'd see as far as safety and regulation from the Russian sporting federation in Icarus is obviously a million miles from what you would see at low level bodybuilding events for example.

I guess my argument boils down to legalization being the only way I can see for widespread access to safe, sterile and informed intake. Also believing that adults should have more freedom over what goes into their body than the government allows presently.

It isn't the perfect solution but I totally believe that what is in place now barely makes a minuscule dent.
 
Classical Mechanic said:
The Nandralone cases will never be explained? How about.............they were drugs cheats and they got caught!
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And how about knowing this happened with other players in Italy in 2001 and it wasn't only related with Segura? I mean in the 90's there were problems with Creatina associated with Juventus players, so what?

What does that have to do with a opinion based on what someone from Australia posts in a Twitter account, if you have any proofs show it to the authorities instead saying it is a fact on a football forum thread, don't get me wrong, I am not naive regarding doping, and would not be surprised if it happens a lot in football.

Problem is that I will not take seriously the opinions posted by a gloryhunter from Australia, the day investigation journalists or the competent authorities say something related with the subject, then I can say something, untill that happens is just opinions based on the speculation from someone else. ;)

And if you want to believe it was Nandrolone in 2001 who is making City play much more football than United, so be it, maybe I would say the same if I was a United fan...
 
OverratedOpinion said:
In the same way I personally think most narcotics should be legalized, regulation and education are key when the intake of these substances can barely be slowed let alone stopped.
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The issue in sport is that the difference between success and failure is millions of pounds. Faced with a choice between a top flight career, loads of money and playing as an amateur and doing a regular job, for normal money not many teenagers will care about long term impact.

Most 16 year olds can't visualise being 30 with a slightly increased risk of heart failure let alone 50 with multiple risk conditions and physical problems. Even if they could, die young and leave a good-looking corpse, still has a certain glamour.

The fact that if they all start doing it as a matter of routine, then the advantage is lost again, won't influence individuals. Instead the pressure to be at the front of the queue for the next big PED with no long-term track record, and no scruples from its promotors well just grow.
 
SCP said:
And how about knowing this happened with other players in Italy in 2001 and it wasn't only related with Segura? I mean in the 90's there were problems with Creatina associated with Juventus players, so what?

What does that have to do with a opinion based on what someone from Australia posts in a Twitter account, if you have any proofs show it to the authorities instead saying it is a fact on a football forum thread, don't get me wrong, I am not naive regarding doping, and would not be surprised if it happens a lot in football.

Problem is that I will not take seriously the opinions posted by a gloryhunter from Australia, the day investigation journalists or the competent authorities say something related with the subject, then I can say something, untill that happens is just opinions based on the speculation from someone else. ;)

And if you want to believe it was Nandrolone in 2001 who is making City play much more football than United, so be it, maybe I would say the same if I was a United fan...
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:lol:

Ever thought there was a culture with Nandralone doping in Italy at that time and they got caught out by new testing advancements or regime? Sometimes the simple answers are the right one.

Those tweets were all factual, if you like the source or not. He was just repeating what’s already in the public domain.

People got suspicious because of Peps history and KDB’s crazy performance last week. If you think there is nothing to see here in the absence of hard evidence then I grant that is a reasonable position.

@jojojo

I think there is already decent evidence around EPO and heart failure to be very wary of allowing open season on it.
 
I really do not feel anyone of us really know how much doping will effect performance. The idea that City have to be doping because of how much they press is really flimsy.
 
Classical Mechanic said:
I think there is already decent evidence around EPO and heart failure to be very wary of allowing open season on it.
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The whole business of juggling body chemistry is risky. The Fuentes defence in the Operacion Puerto car was that he was acting as a doctor - giving drugs and blood transfusions as warranted to keep the athletes stable (stopping the blood getting too thick generally).

None of the drugs he used is banned in a medical sense - only in a sporting sense, and he always claimed he prescribed according to that. The police actually got him for offences like not storing the blood in the correct fridge.

Spanish law has changed now, so PEDs are treated as a kind of sporting fraud or match fixing.
 
Doesn't matter if he's guilty or not.

city don't have fans. The downside for them is that nobody cares - and there's very little press coverage - when they win things, but the upside is that they get away with everything because nobody can make an example of a club nobody cares about.
 
Am I misremembering or did Mourinho hint he thought Barca were juicing years ago? It wasn't very blatant but I seem to recall some talk over his comments. Anyone have a link?
 
Drawfull said:
It wasn't Jose, but was during his time there. As far as I remember, it was reported on a radio show that a source or someone back of house at Real had accused Barca of doping.

And another link: https://www.google.es/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjC9I3prKDYAhXKuRQKHTlVBoIQFgg9MAM&url=http://bleacherreport.com/articles/647158-barcelona-v-real-madrid-the-truth-behind-the-doping-war&usg=AOvVaw0IumQHbVrmzSxfJn8U6lxq
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Ah fair enough. Thanks for the link.
 
Considering Pep’s history, and everything else, he is certainly very suspicious, even if there is no hard evidence.

However, when it comes to performance-enhancing drugs, the line is very thin between legal and illegal. The only explanation I agree with many posters have said, is that rival teams are keeping quiet, because most of them are on some sort of doping as well.
 
Came to ridicule the accusations in this thread until I read some of the red flags in the OP. Biggest one was his habit of giving testers wrong location information.

For those that don't know the point of having the players addresses is for surprise testing. Scheduled testing is very ineffective because PED users know to plan their steroid cycles around the testing dates. The compounds don't stay detectable in your system forever. So you can stop it well before the test date and continue well after.

That's why testers use surprise testing to catch PED users off guard and also why a shady club official will give wrong addresses to frustrate this process.

Fwiw PED use is way more rampant in sport than people realise because of just how easy it is to beat tests. Played amateur level sports and many knew what it would take to make it to the pros was of the wink wink variety. I'm certain city players aren't the only ones if true. Problem is when a whole institution colludes to systematically administer it to its athletes (a la Russia)
 
GazTheLegend said:
Testing in football is an absolute fecking joke.

I can’t find a link as this stuff is criminally under reported in the media but I distinctly remember that prior to the 2010 World Cup Fifa suddenly decided to abandon their planned blood tests of all the competing players for reasons they never fully explained.

Spain never did release the Fuentes blood locker evidence - even though the statute of limitations would mean that it’s unlikely or impossible to stick any criminal charges now -anyway-.

Guardiola is a —proven— doper and his Barcelona team had a lot of question marks over it. He would do ANYTHING to win.

And he has regularly sent his players to his “personal doctor” at Barcelona for treatments lol. Gabriel Jesus recovered from a metatarsal injury in 9 fecking weeks.

Fifa don’t test injured players so it would be INCREDIBLY easy to microdose EPO to help injury recovery (and subsequently improve performance), but let’s not pretend it’s only City doing all of this.
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Absolutely stellar post. Well said.
 
There are too many coincidences amongst this story that would suggest there may be some truth in the claims.

I always thought the pressing game is very difficult to maintain over an entire season. So far this year they are ducking the trend but he does have a large squad and able to rotate lots of youngsters for the league cup. So really that’s just good squad management.

The problem is for us it just looks like sour grapes to make such claims, and to be honest if it was thrown at United when we were winning I would be inclined to laugh at the claim as well.
 
Man City dismantled Bournemouth today and yet the only drugs they appeared to be on was ketamin, maybe tremazipan, half of them barely got out of first gear.
 
Lord SInister said:
you probably did not ventured RAWK during the time when we were the top dogs. Not exactly drugs but every little details was used as an excuse for our success, top being we won all of our titles not because of Ronaldo, Rooney, Scholes, RVP or Rio-Vida but because we had Webb Howard:lol:.
Although we have not reached that level of frustration, but we are near.
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I have an account there, mate. Their "General" is pretty good.

They did accuse all FA this and that, insinuating bribing involved. But you just know they were saying that in jest.
 
GazTheLegend said:
And he has regularly sent his players to his “personal doctor” at Barcelona for treatments lol. Gabriel Jesus recovered from a metatarsal injury in 9 fecking weeks.
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Elaborate? Surely, it would be unethical to not administer some sort of quick recovery wonder drugs to someone with a broken foot, if they existed. Excluding perhaps minor injuries, are there some type of treatments that are allowed for normal patients but not patient footballers?
 
Prometheus said:
Elaborate? Surely, it would be unethical to not administer some sort of quick recovery wonder drugs to someone with a broken foot, if they existed. Excluding perhaps minor injuries, are there some type of treatments that are allowed for normal patients but not patient footballers?
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It's not unethical if you believe, medically speaking, that there is little to zero potential to harm. The danger being that these doctors don't really 'know' if it could be harmful. Microdosing EPO MAY be harmless. And they prescribe drugs which protect the heart along with them in order to ensure patient safety.

FIFA and UEFA don't dope test injured players. I'm of a mind that the reason is that they KNOW players are being administered steroids to aid their recovery - and see no harm in it. They NEED the best players to be -playing football-, so as long as they don't 'know' about it, they don't need to do anything about it. I sort of think that thats the real reason Zlatan became a free agent for the 6 months he did - while he was a free agent, he was able to use any medical aid at his disposal to recover. Nobody could begrudge Zlatan being back in the game, who cares -what- he did to come back, the main thing is that he came back. This is all absolutely hypothetical and definitely a conspiratorial personal opinion of mine.

As to the use of EPO to benefit injury recovery - it's absolutely unethical. http://sportsscientists.com/2007/11/the-effect-of-epo-on-performance/

However, if you dose in tiny amounts at regular intervals, its completely undetectable. These players presumably don't even know what's happening - they just want to play football again. However, with side effects including
Increased viscosity of the blood, Fever, Seizures, Nausea, and Anxiety, it can't be considered 100% safe.
 
GazTheLegend said:
Incidentally, Bayern Munich have very recently re-hired a doctor that Guardiola fell out with a few years ago http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/legendary-bayern-munich-doctor-hans-11512664

He fell out with him over players "slow recovery times", the straw that broke the camels back being an injury to Manuel Neuer.
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Incidentally, Hans Müller-Wohlfahrt has also been in trouble with anti-doping regulations. It's not like he was "too clean" for Pep's linking.
 
Man im not even Sure Ped Guardiola would be able to get our team playing with brains so no he is not the messiah just a very naughty boy!
 
Whatever Guardiola is using, we need to get hand on that.
 
Josep Dowling said:
There are too many coincidences amongst this story that would suggest there may be some truth in the claims.

I always thought the pressing game is very difficult to maintain over an entire season. So far this year they are ducking the trend but he does have a large squad and able to rotate lots of youngsters for the league cup. So really that’s just good squad management.

The problem is for us it just looks like sour grapes to make such claims, and to be honest if it was thrown at United when we were winning I would be inclined to laugh at the claim as well.
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I would have to agree, with the pressing game. I would have expected that City would have already lost 1 or maybe 2 games by now and drawn more but nope they haven't. Compare them to Arsenal when they went undefeated (if only RVN had scored that pen :() Arsenal drew bunch of games that season. City on the other hand are not even drawing games. So I'm not surprised that we are having this discussion here.

TRD said:
Whatever Guardiola is using, we need to get hand on that.
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If they are not on anything (thats forbidden) as speculated here, they clearly doping on lot of luck, as we are having none of that.
 
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jojojo said:
The issue in sport is that the difference between success and failure is millions of pounds. Faced with a choice between a top flight career, loads of money and playing as an amateur and doing a regular job, for normal money not many teenagers will care about long term impact.

Most 16 year olds can't visualise being 30 with a slightly increased risk of heart failure let alone 50 with multiple risk conditions and physical problems. Even if they could, die young and leave a good-looking corpse, still has a certain glamour.

The fact that if they all start doing it as a matter of routine, then the advantage is lost again, won't influence individuals. Instead the pressure to be at the front of the queue for the next big PED with no long-term track record, and no scruples from its promotors well just grow.
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Good post. I think most would gladly take the PEDs from a young age if presented the opportunity to make a fortune in their 20s/play the sport of their dream at a high level.

I excelled at baseball at a young age but by the time I hit my teens my muscle mass didn't develop along with the development of my bone structure, height, etc. So I was lanky and lost my pace and didn't gain strength like my peers. Thus, despite being able to bat both right/left-handed, a good fielder, etc., I simply didn't have the full tools to go above high school level. Fast forward to my mid-20s and finally the muscle development and body mass had caught up to the rest of the body, along with the mental aptitude and maturity. I was quick again, stronger, etc. Now, if someone had come along with the proper PEDs when I was say 15/16 and I knew taking that stuff for the next X years would have seen me go on to a professional career, maybe even a top class player career, I'd have done it without a thought and no regret. Even now, at age 41 going on 42, I'm stronger than I was 10-20 years ago but that's down to better knowledge of nutrition and fitness.
 
GhastlyHun said:
Incidentally, Hans Müller-Wohlfahrt has also been in trouble with anti-doping regulations. It's not like he was "too clean" for Pep's linking.
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That’s interesting. From what I read he was considered “healing hans” or something lol? And likes his acupuncture?

And he’s Usain Bolts coach too. If anyone knows how to avoid getting caught using PED’s...
 
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GazTheLegend said:
That’s interesting. From what I read he was considered “healing hans” or something lol? And likes his acupuncture?

And he’s Usain Bolts coach too. If anyone knows how to avoid getting caught using PED’s...
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Paula Radcliffe too. He is very controversial. Him and Pep falling out doesn't really say anything about their alleged doping practices anyway.
 
OverratedOpinion said:
In the same way I personally think most narcotics should be legalized, regulation and education are key when the intake of these substances can barely be slowed let alone stopped.
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agree with that it all comes down to spreading knowledge and having a healthy education system about it.
 
carvajal said:
hadn´t he been absolved by the Italian justice and later by the anti-doping court?. I would like to believe that he did not dope, although taking the example of cycling in the nineties and the beginning of the century, maybe they all doped and they only caught Guardiola.
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Yes on the basis Guardiola said he didn't do it, rather than anything being wrong with the Nandrolone test.
 
Now the drugs do work
They don’t make us worse
And I think we’ll win the league again...
 
This stuff is dangerous. It does enhance performance though. It does this by stimulating the part of the brain called Shatner's Bassoon. And that's the bit of the brain that deals with time perception. So, a second feels like a month. The players just have that much longer to make the right pass.
 
marukomu said:
This stuff is dangerous. It does enhance performance though. It does this by stimulating the part of the brain called Shatner's Bassoon. And that's the bit of the brain that deals with time perception. So, a second feels like a month. The players just have that much longer to make the right pass.
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I heard one guy took so much he vomited out his own pelvis bone.
 
marukomu said:
This stuff is dangerous. It does enhance performance though. It does this by stimulating the part of the brain called Shatner's Bassoon. And that's the bit of the brain that deals with time perception. So, a second feels like a month. The players just have that much longer to make the right pass.
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It would be annoying to play a match for 450 years though. Merry Christmas!
 
MrMarcello said:
Good post. I think most would gladly take the PEDs from a young age if presented the opportunity to make a fortune in their 20s/play the sport of their dream at a high level.

I excelled at baseball at a young age but by the time I hit my teens my muscle mass didn't develop along with the development of my bone structure, height, etc. So I was lanky and lost my pace and didn't gain strength like my peers. Thus, despite being able to bat both right/left-handed, a good fielder, etc., I simply didn't have the full tools to go above high school level. Fast forward to my mid-20s and finally the muscle development and body mass had caught up to the rest of the body, along with the mental aptitude and maturity. I was quick again, stronger, etc. Now, if someone had come along with the proper PEDs when I was say 15/16 and I knew taking that stuff for the next X years would have seen me go on to a professional career, maybe even a top class player career, I'd have done it without a thought and no regret. Even now, at age 41 going on 42, I'm stronger than I was 10-20 years ago but that's down to better knowledge of nutrition and fitness.
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100% right and I know this for fact.

My best mate played (Yeah, I know) to a very high standard in another very popular sport in the UK (probably 3rd/4th team based sport). On his first international call up, the coach gave all the lads a drug that was meant to improve this that and the other. Said they all knew it was pretty much roids. You can probably deduce what sport it was based on that.

This wasn't a hush hush thing, all the players were on it because they were told to.
 
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