Are footballers doping?

jpboard1 wrote: »

Why are you okay with it?

Also, curious as to know would you have a similar view in relation to cycling and athletics?

I guess I've just never understood the moral panic that surrounds the notion of doping. To my mind, the more pertinent question is why not? I mean, obviously it's against the rules, so that's bad - but should it be?

Professional sports outfits already try to squeeze every advantage in terms of having the best coaches, the best facilities, the best doctors, physios, dieticians, sports scientists, etc. What is the intrinsic thing about doping that makes it so different from any of those?

Some people will say health - but if research came out tomorrow showing that a high protein diet led to increased risk of heart disease, I don't think people would be crying out for the diets of professional athletes to be regulated, so I don't really buy that.

The way I look at it is, you're never going to stamp it out, you just drive it underground and hand a hidden advantage to those willing to shirk the rules and take the risk. You can't make it legal because of the moral outrage that would be raised - so I'm sort of fine with the footballing bodies just turning a blind eye and allowing it to be de facto legal, with the facade that it's not.

jpboard1 wrote: »

I do think that health is an issue. I would also think that such acts or making a mockery of 'fair play'. But most importantly, it would mean that sport is no longer sport. Personally I am very uncomfortable with that.

Why would it mean that though? I mean, it's not like you or I could start doping and suddenly compete with the professionals. You still have have to work just as hard to get to that level, you still have to be a professional athlete at the absolute peak fitness. It means you recover more quickly, and so can actually train even harder than you otherwise would.

With the money involved in the top one or 2 leagues in about 10 countries is so much, there just has to be doping.
The fact that pretty much no one has been caught tells me more about testing than anything else. There's no incentive for anyone to test, FIFA and UEFA don't want players failing, clubs don't and players don't. So don't expect to see anything change

Maximus Alexander wrote: »

Some people will say health - but if research came out tomorrow showing that a high protein diet led to increased risk of heart disease, I don't think people would be crying out for the diets of professional athletes to be regulated, so I don't really buy that.

I'd say there's a big difference between regulating normal behaviour - eating food - and prohibiting unusual and inherently dangerous behaviour - taking drugs.

Pro. F wrote: »

I'd say there's a big difference between regulating normal behaviour - eating food - and prohibiting unusual and inherently dangerous behaviour - taking drugs.

There's nothing 'unusual' about taking drugs, they're fairly commonplace, I'm sure you have some in the house. In terms of their use for performance enhancement in sport, there's nothing 'unusual' there either, since doping is as old as sport itself. It's not necessarily 'inherently dangerous' to use drugs as directed by an appropriately qualified physician either.

Anyway, the primary reason that doping is banned in professional sports isn't down to health concerns - though that is often used as an extra arrow in the quiver - it's banned because of wishy-washy notions of 'equal opportunity' and 'spirit of sport'. Both sound like nice, high minded ideals, but I don't buy it at all.

There's no equality in the upper echelons of football, certainly none that would be diminished by doping. Teams with more money have the advantage, the playing field is not and will never be level. Legal PEDs would be available to all, insofar as top level coaches, modern training facilities, high wage budgets, etc. are available now.

Maximus Alexander wrote: »

There's nothing 'unusual' about taking drugs, they're fairly commonplace, I'm sure you have some in the house. In terms of their use for performance enhancement in sport, there's nothing 'unusual' there either, since doping is as old as sport itself. It's not necessarily 'inherently dangerous' to use drugs as directed by an appropriately qualified physician either.

Taking drugs is unusual and dangerous compared to eating food. You're equating a bodily function with a medical/chemical intervention, but they really are at opposite ends of the spectrum.

Maximus Alexander wrote: »

Anyway, the primary reason that doping is banned in professional sports isn't down to health concerns - though that is often used as an extra arrow in the quiver - it's banned because of wishy-washy notions of 'equal opportunity' and 'spirit of sport'. Both sound like nice, high minded ideals, but I don't buy it at all.

Maybe I'm wrong on this, but I thought the deciding factor in whether or not a particular drug is banned most often comes down to the legality of that drug and the medical knowledge and restrictions on it, with an understandable tendency by the authorities to err on the side of caution. So for example, taking Paracetamol (which thins the blood and so lessons muscle fatigue) is allowed because it is well established as a relatively safe substance and available off the supermarket shelf; while taking nandrolone is not allowed, because it is extremely dangerous and so only medically prescribed in more extreme circumstances.

But tbh, I don't really care why they are banned. I think that it's a good thing that players aren't allowed to use steroids (which compromise natural testosterone production and put strain on the heart and liver (iirc)); EPO (which thickens the blood, straining the heart) and the stronger amphetamines and pain killers (again, risk to the heart). Because if they were allowed then there would be no question that players would have to use them in order to progress in the sport and that would mean that their long term health would be severely compromised.

Maximus Alexander wrote: »

There's no equality in the upper echelons of football, certainly none that would be diminished by doping. Teams with more money have the advantage, the playing field is not and will never be level. Legal PEDs would be available to all, insofar as top level coaches, modern training facilities, high wage budgets, etc. are available now.

I agree.

Most people struggle to accept that elite sport has nothing to do with "health". Health is a secondary concern to winning, and athletes across the entire elite sporting spectrum are willing to compromise health and quality of life in later years to stay competitive now.

Amateur sport has nothing to do with the elite version really. I think once you step through that looking glass you can have a real discussion on doping, but not before.

Pro. F wrote: »

Maybe I'm wrong on this, but I thought the deciding factor in whether or not a particular drug is banned most often comes down to the legality of that drug and the medical knowledge and restrictions on it, with an understandable tendency by the authorities to err on the side of caution. So for example, taking Paracetamol (which thins the blood and so lessons muscle fatigue) is allowed because it is well established as a relatively safe substance and available off the supermarket shelf; while taking nandrolone is not allowed, because it is extremely dangerous and so only medically prescribed in more extreme circumstances.

But tbh, I don't really care why they are banned. I think that it's a good thing that players aren't allowed to use steroids (which compromise natural testosterone production and put strain on the heart and liver (iirc)); EPO (which thickens the blood, straining the heart) and the stronger amphetamines and pain killers (again, risk to the heart). Because if they were allowed then there would be no question that players would have to use them in order to progress in the sport and that would mean that their long term health would be severely compromised.

That's a perfectly reasonable perspective, I'm not going to tell you you're wrong, I just don't see it the same way at all. I'd agree with what LuckyLloyd says above.

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

Most people struggle to accept that elite sport has nothing to do with "health". Health is a secondary concern to winning, and athletes across the entire elite sporting spectrum are willing to compromise health and quality of life in later years to stay competitive now.

Amateur sport has nothing to do with the elite version really. I think once you step through that looking glass you can have a real discussion on doping, but not before.

Athletes are certainly willing to compromise their health, but it's wrong to say that any type of sport has nothing to do with health. In fact I'd say that it is a defining characteristic of sport. Not in the doing-sport-makes-you-healthy sort of way, but rather in the fact that the process of creating rules for a sport is always significantly influenced by the aim of keeping its competitors safe enough to keep competing at the least.

Every sport (or at least the vast majority of them) has lots of rules and regulations aimed purely at protecting the health of the participants. Sports that don't pay due care to that consideration tend to either address that issue or die out, either because of government prohibition or because the level of competition is compromised because of the turnover of competitors.