Russian Footballer a drug cheat claims whistleblower

Grigory Rodchenkov blows the whistle on another Russian Athlete accused of using drugs to enhance performance. He claims that one of the players in Russia’s World Cup squad was on a list of 34 footballers that he helped cover up.

Rodchenkov was head of the anti-doping agency in Moscow, before quitting in 2016. In an interview with the BBC he explained “I saw the names of those at the World Cup and I recognised one.”

Rodchenkov wore a mask in an interview in the US to protect his identity when he admitted that the Russian deputy Prime minister told him “we don't need any positive cases or even noise in football, especially in the national level team.” This adds to the corruption scandal around “state directed” doping programmes which meant Mutko has been banned from all Olympic events.

Despite Rodchenkov whistleblowing against Russia, FIFA decided to close the cases in the investigation into alleged doping of 34 footballers, concluding that there wasn’t “sufficient evidence.” FIFA claimed that they investigated the 34 players given to them via the McLaren reports, which found over 1,000 sportsmen and women across 30 different sports guilty of benefiting from state directed doping between 2012-15.

In response to FIFA deciding to close the investigation, Grigory explained “It's very important that they are still being investigated because we had initial tests but then the procedure was stopped and reported negative.”

Despite Rodchenkov hitting out at Russia for its state directed doping programmes he did urge that he thinks the World Cup will be clean from doping during the tournament, explaining to reporters that “the most complicated and wrong things are done before major tournaments.”

This latest exposure of doping in Russia adds to the ever-growing scandals surrounding Russia and sports, which can be linked heavily to FIFA and their “laid back” attitudes towards Football in Russia.