Football's dark secret

EPO tests are never routinely done on footballers' samples. Indeed, of the 1,324 drugs test samples collected by UK Sport for the Football Association in the year up until 31 March this year, not a single one was tested for EPO.

This is about change as the Football Association, keen to streamline the drug-testing process, are testing EPO for the first time this season.

"Whenever there is something of particular concern in the sports medical world we would always want to be at the forefront of that," said an FA spokesman. "The FA are recognised as leading the way on medical and doping matters in football. This season we will be conducting 1,600 tests at every level of the game.

"Although we do not believe there is a problem with performance-enhancing drugs in football, nevertheless we are determined to be at the forefront of the fight against doping."

For years there have been unsubstantiated rumours of illegal drug-taking among elite footballers.

Harald Schumacher, the former Germany goalkeeper who gained global notoriety for that unforgettably savage foul on Patrick Battiston in the 1982 World Cup, achieved further ignominy when he published a book alleging widespread doping in the Bundesliga.

It effectively ended Schumacher's playing career but drugs controversies in football have continued to raise their head at sporadic intervals ever since.

Most famously, Diego Maradona was kicked out of the 1994 World Cup after failing a routine test. He had taken a performance-enhancing cocktail of five stimulants and was banned from football for 15 months.

Before then, the most famous case had been in 1978, when Scotland's Willie Johnstone was sent home from the World Cup after failing a dope test.

In recent years, the most common performance-enhancing drug has been the steroid nandrolone.

The first positive test for the substance in England was in October 2002, by an unnamed player outside the Premiership.

The FA did not ban him, a decision that was widely criticised, but he was warned that another positive test would lead to a permanent suspension - an unusual decision for a steroid case.

Prominent players in the Italian and Spanish leagues, including Dutchmen Jaap Stam, Edgar Davids and Frank de Boer and Portugal's Fernando Couto were all banned for at least four months for positive nandrolone tests in 2001.

The Holland trio denied they knowingly cheated and claimed they had been given food supplements by the Dutch national team doctor.

Failed drugs tests as a result of performanceenhancing substances have been most frequent in Italy, particularly nandrolone.

In that country, there were 10 positive tests in one season.

In 1999, Turin state prosecutor Raffaele Guariniello began an investigation into the history of doping in Italian football after police uncovered 281 types of drugs in a room in a stadium where Juventus trained. He identified 70 "suspicious deaths" among former footballers who had played professionally in Italy between 1960 and 1996. Guariniello concluded that consumption of "doping-style substances", perhaps without the players' knowledge, was a possible explanation for statistically high occurrences of various fatal illnesses.

In England, footballers have been more readily associated with taking recreational drugs.

Paul Merson's decision to book himself into a rehabilitation clinic for cocaine, alcohol and gambling problems sent shockwaves through the English game in 1995.

His Arsenal team-mate David Hillier, Chris Armstrong (when at Crystal Palace), Lee Bowyer and Dean Chandler (while at Charlton) all tested positive for cannabis in the mid-1990s.

At the time, a television survey claimed one in four of London's young professionals had taken drugs and 92 per cent had been offered illegal substances. In 2002, Mark Bosnich was sacked by Chelsea after he failed a drugs test for cocaine.