with all the news i've been hearing about baseball's trouble getting drug testing for steroids among other things, and also the debate on whether or not to ban ephedrin, it has got me thinking about what MLS is doing about these issues. my 2 questions are: 1. What is their policy as far as drug testing goes? is it random testing, yearly tests?? 2. Do they have a list of banned substances like baseball has, or at least it sounds like they have. As i'm typing this, my best guess is that MLS doesn't tell us this info. just like their policy on player salaries, but maybe someone knows something? My personal opinion is there should be random drug tests for all players and I don't believe they should ban substances that aren't banned by the law. opinions?
Soccer is different though than other sports in that performance enhancing drugs aren't that effective. You need to be fast, not big. You need to be smart, not strong. You need to have constant energy, not sudden bursts. And last I checked there wasn't a pill, drink, or powder that can give you skill.
I don't believe in drug testing! I'm not pro drugs, but unless there is a very good reason for doing it I don't think it should happen to anyone sports people or not! The hard thing for me to decide is how do you decide what a good reason is.
I doubt the league does tests at all. I tend to suspect that none of our players have reached the point of using performance enhancing drugs......though I do think Clint Mathis could do a cycle of Decabol along with some weight training to help him get his burst back Weed---there's no doubt that some of the boys are smoking that. If that were performance enhancing, Jamaica would be World Cup winners. The players are likely to be tested at FIFA sanctioned tournaments like the World Cup, Confed Cup etc....so far none of our boys have tested positive.
Even though I don't believe in drug testing for people I can see on second thoughts the problem of cheating especially when there is a lot at stake.
About the only thing that would help a soccer player would be doping and that would only be effective for a very short period of time and is way too time consuming for such a short effect.
The whole pot/ sports debate is just plain silly. Has anyone ever said, "I just smoked a blunt! Let's run around a field for 90 minutes!" In general, I'm against any performance enhancing drugs. But, provided it doesn't hurt the players performance, I really don't care what a player likes to do on his own time. BTW: Fifa's rules on doping can be found here: http://www.fifa.com/fifa/handbook/doping/2002/Doping2002-E.pdf
I would bet any amount of money that there are some US players out there willing to use performance enhancing drugs. These drugs aren't going to give you skill, but there's a lot of skilled guys out there that aren't quite as athletic as Pablo Mastroeni(just to use some pro as an example), and that's where these drugs would help them. Also, think about guys on the decline of their careers (ie- Agoos last summer) who can't keep up with the younger guys, can't you imagine one of these guys who is trying to put food on the table try these drugs to prolong his career? The league should use the same policy that FIFA uses to test these guys. P.S. - to those of you who need an example of some soccer player who has used performance enhancing drugs, Edgar Davids got caught using them a year or two ago and had a pretty long suspension
I kinda suspected the same, but I thought someone made a reference to Sasa Curic failing a drug test, in one of those "hall of shame" threads. I hadn't heard anything about it, so hopefully someone who followed the story remembers the details? alansl
I have no idea either, but suspect that in the absence of any sort of agreement with the players that it would be difficult to implement something like this. I forget the details, but there were allegations against a host of Italian teams a few years back due to heightened levels of red blood cells (I think). The alleged drugs were similar to the sort of doping that happens in cycling, resulting in increased endurance and ability to process oxygen into energy.
Pass the blunt I've got a game... A few years back the Chicago Bears had a player that was "addicted" to weed. He would smoke before the game and at half-time. Of course he sucked mad ball$.
I think any forms of drug use would be whatever it is cyclists or distance runners use. So that would be any drugs that enhance the effectiveness of red blood cells or their number. So I guess blood packing (I think thats the term) would fall under this, where a certain amount of blood is removed a week or so before competition and then reintroduced to the system right before competition. While it increases blood pressure, it adds red bloods cells to the system so oxygen gets to the muscles and other organs more qucikly, thus increasing their production.
I think it's safe to say that none of our players are doing this. Maybe the league does a test once or twice a year---they probably have to since the league is FIFA sanctioned.