Open any guide book on the Netherlands and the topic of drugs will be there ink-dried and ready for infusion. The country, whose capital boasts a Cannabis Academy, has the reputation for possessing Europe's most easygoing attitude towards drugs. Ever since the 1960s cultural revolution centred on Amsterdam and blew away the austere conservatism that had reigned since the end of World War II, it's all been very groovy. Man.
Recent events may change all that. There is another side to the Netherlands and drugs and it has once again come to the fore after two of the nation's pre-eminent footballers, Edgar Davids and Frank de Boer, both tested positive for the banned anabolic steroid nandrolone.
This is no trippy coffee-house, hash-cake issue. In sport, this is about cheating.
The players will appeal, and while their innocence is maintained, personally and officially by the Dutch FA, the KNVB, both Davids and De Boer will remain part of Louis van Gaal's plans. Even with FIFA's decision to ban Davids on Thursday, the player is here in Estonia - although the KNVB's insistence that food cooked by them was not the cause of the nandrolone removed one of Davids and De Boer's key alibis.
Another, used by De Boer, was: "Maybe we had some pills with the Dutch team." Maybe that was not exactly what he meant. "I'd never knowingly use any illegal or banned drug under any circumstances," was maybe what De Boer intended to say. Accidental rather than deliberate use of nandrolone appears to be the players' best argument now.
"Frank took the normal vitamin pills with the Dutch squad and I think he is maybe in the same situation as Davids," said De Boer's twin, Ronald of Rangers. Whether that was helpful is another maybe question.
FIFA's decision on Thursday to ban Davids indefinitely with immediate effect reinforced the ban imposed upon Davids by the Italian FA for failing a drug test after Juventus played Udinese on March 4th. Davids had tested positive for norandrosterone and noreticololanolone, two substances which contribute to the production of the illegal anabolic steroid nandrolone.
There was a measure of superficial doubt about Davids' situation because of the differing reactions by football's various governing bodies. Thursday's apparent harmonisation is not good news for him.
Spain's less stringent procedures mean that Frank de Boer is available but at a UEFA meeting in 12 days' time he is likely to be banned too. A fortnight ago it was confirmed that the Barcelona defender had failed a second test for nandrolone. In the first results, after Barcelona's UEFA Cup match against Celta Vigo on March 15th, De Boer was more than four times over the limit of two nanogrammes - two parts per millilitre of urine. The second set of results had De Boer's nandrolone level at 7.1.
These seem like small differences. However, the reason why the limit was set at two by FIFA and UEFA was because a study by the International Olympic Committee found that the high- est level of nandrolone present in a non-athlete or non-professional sportsman was 0.6 per millilitre.
Thus they allowed for a more than 300 per cent increase in nandrolone to occur naturally in a sportsman. Frank de Boer's top level was more than four times that 300 per cent allowance. The idea that such amounts could be generated through exercise alone provokes laughter and cynicism in the world of athletics where steroid abuse has been a factor for decades.
In football it is thought drugs have been less prevalent mainly because they cannot improve a player's skill. But the nature of football has been changed by the enormity of the wealth of the sport. Someone who plays 50 games a season gets appearance fees for doing so, a standard in professional contracts. Paul Gascoigne once revealed that Ally McCoist's appearance fee at Rangers was £12,500 per game, even as a substitute. Imagine Davids' fees at Juventus. There is a financial as well as physical incentive.
Rule changes have made the game quicker and at the top level a player like Frank de Boer can play on a Sunday for Barcelona in the Primera Liga, on Wednesday in European competition and is then expected to be at peak fitness for his country as well. Month after month, year after year.
Season-long stamina is fundamental to the modern professional and while a steroid like nandrolone will not make a top professional a better player, it will help him recover faster from game to game. The severity and alacrity of FIFA's action suggests a hardening of attitude. Tip of the iceberg may be an appropriate phrase, and there is evidence that drugs have been part of Dutch football longer than many care to observe. In the 1970s the rise of Twente Enschede - to the UEFA Cup final in 1975 - coincided with the presence at the club of a doctor called Dick Oosthoek. In 1998 Oosthoek admitted supplying players with illegal substances.
"If the team got through to the next round of the UEFA Cup, that represented a significant amount of money for the club and the players," he said. "I wasn't interested in whether the drugs were on the banned list or not." Oosthoek later worked for the Dutch Cycling Federation. Two of Twente's players from that era, Rene Notten and Epi Drost, died from heart attacks in their 40s.
Another member of that side had a non-fatal heart attack while in his 40s. For all the concentration on a World Cup qualifier in Tallinn, there is a longer story unravelling for both Davids and De Boer, and Fernando Couto. And the rest. It is about personal physical health in a broader sense.
But it is also about the health of the game. FIFA cannot allow the sport's credibility to be undermined in the manner of cycling and athletics. They need to act quickly: when the officials ask for two Dutch players for the random drug test after tonight's match, everyone will want to know if Frank de Boer was one of them. Nandrolone has dragged our eyes off the ball.
