Italian soccer was last night rocked by yet another dope scandal when Lazio's Dutch international defender Jaap Stam was suspended with immediate effect following a positive dope test for the anabolic steroid nandrolone.
Stam (29), who moved from Manchester United to Lazio in a surprise £19 million deal in late August, tested positive following a Serie A game against Atalanta on October 14th. Stam's suspension comes after a 12-month period which has seen nine Serie A and Serie B players, including Stam's Dutch international team-mate Edgar Davids of Juventus and his Lazio team-mate Portuguese defender Fernando Couto, test positive for nandrolone.
The Lazio club doctor, Andrea Campi, last night expressed his bewilderment at Stam's positive test, commenting: "We've all been taken completely by surprise by this news. All our players use mineral salts and medicinal products that have been certified for use by CONI (the governing body of Italian sport)."
Lazio officials also pointed out that, four days after the Atalanta game, CONI officials carried out spot tests on Lazio players at their Formello training ground, north of Rome. On that occasion, 10 Lazio players were selected for testing, but the club ordered that the entire squad undergo the test. According to Lazio, all their players, including Stam, tested negative.
That Stam is the third Dutch international to test positive for nandrolone, following Davids and Barcelona's Frank De Boer, both in March, inevitably focuses much attention on the Dutch national team. In this case, however, the Dutch connection does not entirely link up since an injury had ruled Stam out of Holland's final and irrelevant World Cup qualifying 4-0 win against Andorra on October 6th, the weekend before the game against Atalanta.
Both the Davids and De Boer cases have prompted huge controversy. Davids has vehemently denied having taken any prohibited substance. Despite his denial and a lengthy legal wrangle between Juventus and the Italian Football Federation, he was given a five-month backdated suspension in August. Following an appeal, he returned to competitive football in September.
The August sentence of five months in itself was controversial, since it seemed at odds with the 16-month bans handed out to lesser known Perugia players Salvatore Monaco and Christian Bucchi and Pescara's Andrea De Bold who had all tested positive for nandrolone in September and October 2000.
As for Frank De Boer, he too benefited from mild mercy of sporting justice when a UEFA Court of Appeal in July reduced his one-year suspension to four months. On that occasion, UEFA justified their decision by suggesting that it was "more than probable" that De Boer had "absorbed the banned substances through contaminated food supplements".
This latest case will only heighten the suspicions of those who believe that doping practises are in fact widespread in Italian soccer. It was just three years ago, in the wake of the Festina EPO scandal at the 1998 Tour de France, that the former Roma and Lazio coach, Czech Zdenek Zeman, prompted alarm by stating his belief that Italian soccer had a serious dope problem.
Zeman even had the temerity to point the finger at both Juventus and two of its most famous stars, past and present, in Gianluca Vialli and Alessandro Del Piero. Those accusations prompted the Turin-based magistrate Raffaele Guariniello to instigate a series of investigations, some of which may come to court early next year with clubs or players being charged under the terms of recently introduced anti-dope legislation.
In England, talks aimed at averting a players' strike will continue next week after a meeting yesterday failed to reach agreement, but the delay means next weekend's matches will not be affected.
The Professional Footballers' Association (PFA) have to give at least seven days' notice of strike action, and last night the union confirmed the games on the weekend of November 24th-25th - including Arsenal v Manchester United - will not be targeted.
