Lazio's Dutch defender Jaap Stam has tested positive for the banned anabolic steroid nandrolone, the Italian National Olympic Committee (CONI) said today.
Stam, who controversially left Manchester United for Lazio in August, was tested following the October 14th Italian league match between Lazio and Atalanta.
In line with regulations the CONI laid down last June, Stam is now suspended with immediate effect.
The B test, which used to follow on automatically from the first test, will now only take place at the player's request.
The CONI laboratory in Rome detected traces of norandrosterone and noretiocolanolone, both derivatives of nandrolone in the Dutch defender's urine sample.
The 29-year-old Stam is the latest in a line of professional footballers who have tested positive for the drug - and he is not the first from Lazio.
Last season, the club's Portuguese international captain Fernando Couto was banned by FIFA for ten months after he also failed a test for nandrolone but later had the suspension reduced to four months.
FIFA also banned Juventus star Edgar Davids while, last June, Italian football chiefs suspended Parma defender Stefano Torrisi for the same reason.
But Davids, who tested positive last March, had his original five-month ban reduced in September by a month by the Italian authorities.
Last July, the court of appeal of European football's governing body UEFA reduced a one-year nandrolone suspension imposed on Barcelona's Dutch international Frank de Boer, who tested positive for the drug in March.
UEFA said while the positive test stood, they believed it was "more than probable" that de Boer "absorbed the banned substances by contaminated food supplements" although the level of nandrolone in his urine sample was registered at four times the permitted level.
Davids reportedly suggested a cough mixture may have been the cause of his positive test.
Two other players from Italian sides, Bari's Belgian goalkeeper Jean Francois Gillet and Parma's Stefano Torrisi, also had bans reduced.
AFP