Zeman and Lippi clash over doping case

Euroscene: It's just after five o'clock on Sunday afternoon and, as always, Italian TV channel RAI Due is running its immediate post-match special of interviews and comment on the afternoon's Serie A action. Among the star interviewees are Marcello Lippi, former Juventus coach now in charge of Italy, and Czech Zdenek Zeman, coach of Serie A side Lecce.

For once, the talk is not of dubious offside calls or dodgy penalty decisions. Rather, the talk is of judicial sentences and alleged doping practises. In the wake of last Friday's historic sentence which saw a Turin court hand down a 22-month sentence to Juventus club doctor, Ricardo Agricolo, for systematic doping practises (including the use of EPO), it could hardly be otherwise.

Here they were then, meeting not so much face-to-face as airwave-to-airwave, two of the key players in the so-called "Processo Juve" or Juventus Trial. Friday's court judgment found the Juventus team doctor guilty of doping practises over a four year period between 1994 and 1998 when the coach in charge was, of course, Marcello Lippi.

Zeman, of course, is the man whose original 1998 allegations of widespread doping practises in Italian football in general and at Juventus in particular sparked the six year investigation and court case which led to Friday's judgment.

This, then, was showdown time at the OK Corral. Not surprisingly, both men were sticking to their guns: "The team doctor has been found guilty", opened up Zeman,"and he was hardly doping himself, he was doping someone. I think that other people (at Juventus) have to have known why the club doctor was buying such large quantities of medicines (281 different products, enough for a small hospital, according to the prosecution). The one thing that is certain here and not open to interpretation is that the club doctor has been found guilty."

In response, Lippi was typically defiant in his defence of his former players and club, saying: "This sentence doesn't change my admiration for and appreciation of all those people, players, directors, medical personnel and others, who worked with me at Juventus.

"Many of these guys are still at Juventus and they're still winning.

"That's why my Juventus won a lot (three Serie A titles and one Champions League trophy between 1994 and 1998), that side had an extraordinary mental and moral strength."

As the brief televisual exchange concluded, Lippi invited Zeman to "get out of football" if he wanted to criticise it. "No, no," replied Zeman, "you can be part of the system because you want to improve it, to make it cleaner".

Later speaking to reporters, Zeman touched on the theme again: "You lot say that Juventus are satisfied. For me, that's the most serious aspect of the whole business. This is a court sentence that casts a shadow over Juve's successes. The (club) doctor is convicted of sporting fraud and the club didn't know? As far as I'm concerned, the club directors and management are also involved." For two days (Friday and Saturday), Zeman - the so-called "Great Accuser" - had refused to comment on last Friday's sentence. When he finally did so, he was typically forthright in his comments.

Zeman regularly breaks through the "omertá" of football-speak to articulate uncomfortable truths. In this case, a Turin prosecutor, Raffaele Guariniello, and a Turin court were listening to him.

The question remains, however - is European and world football, from FIFA and UEFA down to your local amateur club, listening? Or is it not just too easy to turn a blind eye as we get on with the thing we all love most, namely watching and admiring the splendid, sometimes inspirational skills of the great players of the contemporary game? On that one, the jury is still out.