"Sport has its own morality. If you want to improve your performance, you do an extra lap of the pitch or an extra circuit in the gym, you don't take a pill and sit in the sun for an hour. That's the morality of sport."
The above `moralist' is none other than Czech Zdenek Zeman, coach to Italian Serie A side AS Roma and the man who in July of this year unleashed a veritable whirlwind of investigations, accusations, insinuations, litigation and speculation by claiming in a series of interviews that "pharmaceutical abuse" was widespread within Italian soccer. Six months later, the Zeman "J'Accuse", aimed at all the vested interests in today's soccer-business, threatens to seriously spoil not only the New Year celebrations but much of the New Year itself.
Ten days ago, on the eve of what turned out to be a painful 4-1 drubbing for his Roma side away to Inter Milan at the San Siro, Zeman was still more than happy to give vent to his opinions on doping. "I give a lot of interviews and I've given a lot about doping but I don't mind giving another one just as long as the question is dealt with seriously . . . People think that I have found myself ostracised by the soccer community but the truth is that the vast majority of people in this (soccer) world are with me on this matter," he said.
"Worrying doping practises have been around for years in sports like athletics, swimming, cycling, weightlifting etc. Do you really believe that they haven't moved into soccer, too?"
Zeman's July allegations prompted inquiries by both CONI, the governing body of Italian sport, and, more importantly, by the Italian state judiciary, with the most significant of the latter inquiries still ongoing and being headed by Turin-based state attorney, Raffaele Guariniello.
So far, no one has been charged, let alone tried for any form of "pharmaceutical abuse". So far. Given the vagueness of Italian legislation (and that of many other countries) as to what exactly constitutes doping, it could be that magistrate Guariniello will press charges in relation to worker health and safety legislation.
In other words, he may charge clubs, coaches and club doctors with having endangered a player's health by using relatively new substances (creatine for example) about whose long term implications and effect little or nothing is known. In that context, too, Guariniello has been looking into the allegedly "premature" deaths of upwards of 70 footballers over the last 20 years.
In his original July remarks, Zeman specified no particular products but rather concentrated on what he saw as a "sick" mentality that has found its way into professional soccer. Everything that has happened in the five months since then has confirmed him in his belief that he was right to raise the alarm.
"I'm not worried about people who died 10 years ago or last year, you can't do anything for them now . . . I'm worried about the future, and it seems to me that the time has come for the whole soccer movement to admit to the problem (of doping) and do something about it."
It remains to be seen what the world of soccer really intends to do. On the very day earlier this month that the Italian Soccer Federation (FIGC) was celebrating its centenary with the gala occasion of an Italy v Rest of World friendly at the Olympic Stadium in Rome, judicial notification of `being under investigation' was served on past and present Federation Presidents, Antonio Matarrese and Luciano Nizzola.
They are being investigated on allegations of fraud and misconduct in office. In layman's terms, the Rome-based investigating magistrates (whose inquiry was born out of the original Turin investigation) believe that both Presidents knew and encouraged systematic malpractice and cover-ups of dope tests carried out on Serie A footballers. Evidence of such systematic malpractice by CONI's Rome lab (tests in recent years were carried out in a haphazard manner if at all, while positive results were simply covered up) has already prompted action by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) which suspended the Acqua Acetosa lab in Rome last October. Furthermore, five functionaries of the lab are currently under investigation on charges of fraud and misconduct.
As the New Year beckons, much remains to be clarified. Why were tests on Serie A footballers not carried out properly? If the reason concerns alleged banned substances, what were they? Are we talking only about so-called amino acid restoratives (creatine) or, as media speculation insists, are we talking about every known form of sports doping, including amphetamines, anabolic steroids and EPO (the drug at the centre of this summer's Tour de France scandal)? Are banned substances now in widespread use in professional soccer in Italy and elsewhere?
Zdenek Zeman does not claim to have all the answers. He does claim, however, that there are inconsistencies and suspicions and he intends to keep voicing them. Injustice and intimidation (and there has been a deal of the latter from vested soccer interests including rival clubs) are unlikely to deter him. Thirty years ago, he watched Soviet Union tanks move into his native Prague and made his bid for freedom, ending up in Sicily with a 40p per session job as a coach to an under-12s team in Palermo, Sicily. Three decades on he earns more than $1 million dollars a year as Roma coach but his sense of injustice remains intact. Thanks to him there is no doubt we will be hearing more of the Italy doping scandal in 1999.
