Football’s possible doping problem, Messi magic at the Club World Cup, and Mbappe’s hospital scare

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Hello. As a Premier League star stares down the barrel of a possible four-year ban, we’re asking: how concerned should football be about performance-enhancing drugs?

On the way:

💉Doping: under control, or not?

✨ Magic Messi keeps Miami alive

🏥 Mbappe’s hospital scare

🥜 Nutmegging the greatest

Football and doping: It’s complicated

The implications for footballers accused of doping are not remotely trivial. Many of those charged protest their innocence vehemently, but since anti-doping agencies apply strict liability principles and apportion responsibility irrespective of intent, the consequences hit hard.

(Illustration: Kelsea Petersen/The Athletic)

Paul Pogba is almost two years on from the positive test for dehydroepiandrosterone that culminated in an 18-month ban and the end of his second stint at Juventus. Once the world’s most expensive player, he’s free to resume his career again but is yet to find a club, stuck outside the tent with his thirties in full flow and time passing him by.

In Germany, Mario Vuskovic, a Croatia Under-21 international, found himself in a similar boat after a four-year suspension for returning a sample with EPO (erythropoietin) in it prompted Bundesliga side Hamburg to tear up his contract. He’s 23 and, since 2022, has been inactive in his prime.

They are two examples for Mykhailo Mudryk to dwell on with his own doping case pending. As with Pogba and Vuskovic, the Chelsea winger denies deliberate wrongdoing and says the prohibited substance he is accused of taking late last year, meldonium, was not ingested knowingly. But while intent can affect the severity of a sanction, it does not guard players against sanctions per se.

An English Football Association charge against Mudryk will be dealt with in due course and the potential impact on him and Chelsea is obvious. The most extreme punishment the 24-year-old could receive is a ban spanning four years. But these cases (fairly isolated in the sport) invariably call for analysis of how common doping is in football. Based on the numbers involved, the assumption is not very — but are we seeing the full picture?

Premier League players returned two adverse tests in 2023-24

Phil Buckingham took on the subject for an excellent article published this morning. It’s fair to say, as he reflects, that as a team game in which technical skill matters as much as physicality (and 22 athletes are on the pitch), the illicit gains promised by doping are perceived to be smaller than in individual pursuits.

At a distance, the data is encouraging. For a start, footballers are closely monitored. More than 2,000 samples were taken across the Premier League and the EFL last season, and every squad member at the 2022 FIFA World Cup took at least one test. But dig a little deeper and some of the findings are more opaque.

For instance, a Freedom of Information (FOI) request revealed that two Premier League players returned adverse tests in 2023-24, as did two others in the season before it. None received penalties. We don’t know their identities, the nature of their adverse tests, or the reasons no action ensued. The English FA said only that it takes “anti-doping in English football extremely seriously”.

UEFA, meanwhile, enforced more than 15,000 tests over a five-year period leading up to 2024, but Europe’s governing body wouldn’t tell The Athletic how many of those returned positive findings. Mudryk’s adverse sample came during a UEFA tournament while he was representing Ukraine in the Nations League in November.

His next move is either to accept the FA charge or request a hearing, a £62m signing with another six years on his club contract at risk of a long stretch on the sideline. All eyes are on him, but more broadly, his case has us thinking again about how far doping in football — unintentional or otherwise — really stretches.

The underdogs roar at the Club World Cup

The obstacles to Club World Cup supremacy are getting biblical. For the third time in 72 hours, thunderclouds forced a match delay yesterday, suspending Palmeiras’ Group A win over Al Ahly for 40 minutes.

The Gods aren’t conspiring against FIFA entirely, though. Last night, we got our first proper upset as South American champions Botafogo did what virtually nobody has done for the past six months and figured European champions Paris Saint-Germain out. A deflected goal from Igor Jesus (coming to the Premier League soon) fulfilled Botafogo’s promise to bury PSG in the “cemetery of favourites”.

And just when it seemed like FIFA’s must-have participants, Inter Miami, might drop out of the tournament without making a dent in it, up stepped Lionel Messi to keep them in business. There’s no greater clutch player in the history of the sport and the sensational finish that gave Miami a 2-1 victory against Porto proved once more that a free kick in the hands of Argentina’s finest might as well be a penalty. It had more whip on it than Indiana Jones.

The tournament was waiting for a moment like that. Miami were waiting for a moment like that, and so was the reputation of Major League Soccer. Take out the stench around FIFA shoe-horning Miami into the competition and there’s no denying that any event is enhanced by Messi’s genius.

• While Miami sit pretty, fellow MLS side Seattle Sounders are as good as out. A 3-1 defeat to Atletico Madrid puts their chance of progression between very slim and none. Either they beat PSG on Monday or it’s curtains.

News round-up

• Kylian Mbappe was an absentee from Real Madrid’s opening Club World Cup fixture and it transpired that the forward was suffering from a nasty bout of gastroenteritis. He was admitted to hospital but has since been released.
• Spain international Martin Zubimendi will be an Arsenal player very soon. He’s in London as we speak.
• Liverpool are playing the transfer window beautifully. They’re on the verge of signing Florian Wirtz from Bayer Leverkusen for £116m ($156.5m) and they’re close to recouping almost a third of that fee by selling defender Jarell Quansah to Leverkusen in return. Bosh.
• Juventus have announced a new contract with kit manufacturer Adidas — which, contrary to general trends in elite football, is actually worth less in real terms than their last one.
• Manchester City have been fined £1million by the Premier League for causing numerous late kick-offs, their second punishment for that offence.
• Some praise for the expanded Club World Cup from City CEO Ferran Soriano: “It’s something that was very much needed” (said very few people, ever).

Canada boss Marsch in hot water while USMNT progress

Fun and games in Canada’s Gold Cup camp, where head coach Jesse Marsch is under investigation over an alleged confrontation with a Concacaf official during Tuesday’s 6-0 beasting of Honduras.

What’s funny about this is that Marsch wasn’t even on the touchline. He was serving a two-match ban after prior fun and games (and a red card) in Canada’s Nations League win over the USMNT in March. Canada Soccer says it is working to “resolve the matter” — and to be fair, the circumstances leading to it sound more than a little ridiculous.

The good thing for Marsch? Canada looked in fine fettle and are well on their way to the knockouts. In front of them, the USMNT have already made it through after disposing of the solitary genuine threat in Group D: invitational guests Saudi Arabia.

Chris Richards, above, got the only goal, but the power behind it belonged to Sebastian Berhalter’s sumptuous (and very awkward to defend) delivery. I think that’s what they call the corridor of uncertainty.

Around TAFC 🔄

• Jason Wilcox has been at Manchester United for just over a year. In that short time, he’s risen to one of the most powerful front-office positions at Old Trafford. Here’s how.
• Barcelona’s stadium is about seven kilometres from Espanyol’s. I was surprised, then, to learn from Pol Ballus that Joan Garcia is the first player to move from Espanyol to Barca in 31 years.
• That evergreen query: where are cash-strapped Barca finding the readies to pay for Nico Williams?
• I remember Gennaro Gattuso as a young pitbull at Rangers. He doesn’t seem to have changed much. James Horncastle is in two minds about whether Gattuso’s blood and thunder will do Italy’s national team good — or if Claudio Ranieri was a better option.
• Quiz question: Six players appeared for England in the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s. Can you name them? Answers here later today and in Monday’s TAFC.
• Most clicked in yesterday’s TAFC: Juventus in the White House

Catch A Match 📺

(Kick-offs ET/UK time. All Club World Cup matches are shown on DAZN in the U.S. and UK, as well as the other channels stated.)

Friday:

FIFA Club World Cup: Group C: Benfica vs Auckland City, 12pm/5pm; Bayern Munich vs Boca Juniors, 9pm/2am — TBS, Fubo/Channel 5; Group D: Flamengo vs Chelsea, 2pm/7pm — TNT, Fubo (U.S. only); LAFC vs ES Tunis, 6pm/11pm.

Saturday:

FIFA Club World Cup: Group E: Inter vs Urawa Red Diamonds, 3pm/8pm — Channel 5 (UK only); River Plate vs Monterrey, 9pm/2am — TBS, Fubo (U.S. only); Group F: Mamelodi Sundowns vs Borussia Dortmund, 12pm/5pm; Fluminense vs Ulsan HD, 6pm/11pm.

Concacaf Gold Cup: Group B: Curacao vs Canada, 7pm/12am — Fox Sports, Fubo, ViX/Premier Sports.

Sunday:

FIFA Club World Cup: Group G: Juventus vs Wydad AC, 12pm/5pm — Channel 5 (UK only); Manchester City vs Al Ain, 9pm/2am — TNT, Fubo/Channel 5; Group H: Real Madrid vs Pachuca, 3pm/8pm — TNT, Fubo (U.S. only); Red Bull Salzburg vs Al Hilal, 6pm/11pm.

Concacaf Gold Cup: Group A: Mexico vs Costa Rica, 10pm/3am; Group D: USMNT vs Haiti, 7pm/12am — both Fox Sports, Fubo, ViX/Premier Sports.

And Finally… 

Nutmegging Messi is no mean feat, and Porto’s Fabio Vieira ticked that off his bucket list in Atlanta last night.

Unfortunately, the on-loan Arsenal midfielder’s next move was to slice a shambles of a pass with the outside of his left boot straight out of play. Just as the Louvre was making space for him, too…

(Top photo: Mykhailo Mudryk; Simon Stacpoole/Offside/Offside via Getty Images)

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