Interesting stuff...... What do you think? Interesting how it was done 'secretly', so they were trying to hide it. Should their cup be taken away/star from their shirts?
This is a pretty old story. The big question is of course whether it was a banned substance at the time? If not, then the story is pretty irrelevant.
I wonder since this story claims they were trying to 'hide' the fact that they were getting injections makes it fishy. And thanks for the links, but this story was new to me.
I know that the IOC didn't ban doping until 1967, the first ever doping tests during the Olympics happened in 1968. Edit: after googling around the internet a bit: the first doping tests during a FIFA tournament happened during the 1966 WC - but I still couldn't find when it was banned.
if wiki is correct, and I understand it right, it was banned the same year, 1966. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_performance-enhancing_drugs_in_sport
Sorry, I wasn't trying to have a go at you at all for posting it. Merely that the media seem to frequently rehash this story with a new angle.
I doubt that the West German side can be discredited and they wouldn't get their title taken away. With or without drugs, I think that West Germany had a very good side in 1954 and Sepp Herberger did a great job in coaching the side. No drugs would have helped him to coach the West Germans like he did.
Old story. The accusations first came up a short while after the World Cup when Hungarian players were under pressure in their home country and accused the Germans of doping. However no evidence was ever found of this and now it's too late for it to ever be substantiated one way or the other. However a few points - technically there was no doping back then as there was no list of banned substances. So technically nobody broke the rules even if they doped - the hungarian keeper once mentioned in an interview that the Hungarian team themselves might have been doped. Of course there's no evidence of that either - Germany won that game as a total underdog due to a number of factors. Adidas had developed boots with studs which were a great advantage in the weather in Bern that day. Now of course everybody uses studs. Again, nothing illegal here but an example of better equipment on the day. Luck and great fighting spirit played a big role too - the famous Puszkas offside goal in the last minute is another myth that supposedly cheated Hungary. Fact is that nobody knows if the goal was offside as the bad TV pictures don't clarify it one way or the other. I wish people would give the German team in 1954 more credit. The came to the WC as total underdogs and ended up beating the big favourites in the final after being 2-0 down. The anti- German sentiment all over the world at the time tried to paint a narrative of an undeserved win in many parts of the world unfortunately.
Well, the Hungarian players got Vitamin pills, and I bet those Vitamins weren't much different from those the German player got (and the other nations also, or do you think Brazil, Uruguay, England, Italy and so on didn't use those Vitamins)
It is not that simple. It is true that an international drugs list was only established in 1962 by the Council of Europe (to which all nations agreed). It is also true that actual procedural testing only took place since 1966 by the FIFA at World Cups; FIFA was actually together with the UCI (cycling federation) the first sports federation to do so. But it doesn't mean that it was before that time legal or seen as sportsmanlike. It was pretty much banned since the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, where the regulations made an explicit mention of performance enhancing drugs. Ferenc Puskas famously accused the opponent of 'cheating' (to state it exactly: taking intravenous injections) and it led to some serious sets of retaliation, alongside a few dimensions. That he was forbidden to freely enter the country and/or play against German opponents was a heavy counter-measure. The 1960 European Cup Final could only go ahead once Puskas made formal apologies and pulled back his comments. This retaliation was, of course, only so pervasive and serious because already back then the usage of performance enhancing drugs was seen as a heavy-loaded accusation. For now I ignore the question whether the Germans took drugs and whether the state-led Hungarians did too, but the idea that it was certainly 'legal' is false. For the ones who are interested, see this article too: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09523367.2013.831838?journalCode=fhsp20#.UlusDhDNOJ4]
Fair point. Certainly it wouldn't have been right if the Germans or Hungarians had doped in that match. It's just unfortunately impossible to prove at this point. Even the recent German report about doping in the old West Germany couldn't point to any specific cases. I always suspected many West German track and field athletes of using doping though as they managed to often get better times and distances in the seventies and eighties than their compatriots today. They weren't as suspicious at the time because Americans, East Germans etc. achieved significantly better results even then and therefore overshadowed many Western Europeans
That was also related to privacy concerns, the investigators said. Which is totally understandable I have to say because if the German privacy law was able to save war criminals from facing scrutiny - and possibly punishment (the massacre at the Dutch town of Putten by the Wehrmacht is a case in point), then of course it also applies to minor offences. The privacy law is notoriously strict, from an international point of view, for all sorts of (perceived) offences.
Puck, what is your take on the admission of the Dutch players of the 1970s (most notably Johnny Rep I believe) that they took amphetamines on a regular basis prior to matches?
Is that a rhetoric question? I've already posted something on that. Rep didn't say it was 'regular'. https://www.bigsoccer.com/community/...e-due-to-doping.1986807/page-13#post-29077466 Not saying they were totally clean all the time but amphetamines were already traceable in 1970s (if tested for), so also during World Cups.
Also see now that Jonathan Wilson discusses the Soviet Union and Dutch Total Football in the same breath and same paragraph, with sinister suggestions. Meanwhile, not a single sentence about 1954 abuses in his 2nd edition. What an idiot. As long as he cannot prove a similar organizational and hierarchic structural system, scientific sports schools, state-led backing (hint: it never happened in Holland), soft-soaping of football authorities and high-tech sports camps where footballers became beefed up, the comparison with USSR (or West-Germany) is bullocks.
He he he... I find it funny how people from other countries always moan and immediately accuse the Germans of taking drugs or cheating every time the Germans destroy them in sport. Even in formula 1. parhaps they do cheat and if that is the they know how to cheat within constraints of the rule books. That makes them just smart guys in my opinion and it makes the authorities losers in my eyes.
Worth to point out that the German FA themselves helped to fuel these sentiments, for example in the person of Peco Bauwens, as well as some nationalistic expressions in the press. Also, like Goldblatt points out in his general overview 'The ball is round': "Like most pre-war German institutions that were reborn in some new guise in the Federal Republic, the DFB had barely been touched by the process of denazification." http://fussballdoping.derwesten-recherche.org/2012/05/„was-in-bern-passiert-ist-war-verboten/ And what happened at that 1966WC? Double standards by the FIFA.
If you want a response you need to quote me. I'm not in the habit of checking every single thread to see if something has been written. Meanwhile in that response you provide detail but no comment. What do you make of it? Does it invalidate the achievements of Ajax or the Netherlands at all?