FIFA gets Athens warning over drugs

Drugs in Sport: The head of the world anti-doping body Dick Pound has launched a fierce attack on FIFA's apparent reluctance to sign up to a worldwide code on drugs and claims football appears to be helping cheats back into the game.Pound reiterated a threat that if football's governing body had not signed the WADA code by the summer there would be no soccer at the Athens Olympics.

Pound, chairman of WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency), told FourFourTwo magazine: "I just don't think they have thought this through. They said they would sign. It makes it sound like they are actively looking for ways to put cheaters back into play.

"The ball is in FIFA's court. The IOC has amended the Olympic charter so that only sports which have adopted and implement the world anti-doping code can be on the Olympic programme. If they don't sign they don't have to bother coming to Athens.

"Where's the moral outrage that here's somebody who has deliberately cheated in order to improve their performance? It's not like a guy was captured by Nazi frogmen and injected against his will."

FIFA and the International Cycling Union (UCI) are reluctant to sign up to an automatic two-year ban for any athlete who knowingly uses performance-enhancing steroids or hormones, but Pound insisted there was scope under the code for every case to be treated on its own merits.

"There is not an automatic two-year sanction for a first offence," he said. "That could not be clearer in the code. You also have to consider the circumstances of each individual case - that has been there since the beginning.

"I don't know what the stumbling block is. It makes me wonder whether these people can read.

"Football has a (drugs) problem, as does every sport in every country in the world, but how widespread it is I don't know. To say there's no doping problem in football is burying one's head in the sand."

Pound said FIFA and the UCI had been given the chance to raise concerns at the WADA conference in Copenhagen last year and had accepted the code - but had not signed it since then.

The WADA chief also spelt out his disgust for any athlete who used drugs.

"Do I have sympathy for the position that if you are making a shedload of money you are allowed to cheat? No I don't, It's not only a sport crime, it's an economic crime. This is somebody who is stealing money from fellow competitors. Why would you feel sorry for that person?"