Big Arsene putting you know who on blast for being cheats

VVG2C from Le Prof. Sick of these above average teams being hyped up as legends purely due to 'how hard they work' when in reality its all down to cheating. Drugs and referee purchasing is the only reason Barca won their last 2 european cups and I am sure they will be stripped off them within 10 years.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/foo...leaned-up.html

Originally Posted by saffers

VVG2C from Le Prof. Sick of these above average teams being hyped up as legends purely due to 'how hard they work' when in reality its all down to cheating. Drugs and referee purchasing is the only reason Barca won their last 2 european cups and I am sure they will be stripped off them within 10 years.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/foo...leaned-up.html

I honestly cannot believe the almost blatant ignoring of operacion puerto by the mass media. It would have probably been exposed as the biggest case of cheating in sporting history if anyone had the bottle or the integrity to dig deeper and reveal all. The way the spanish courts desperately hung the cyclists out to dry whilst doing all they could to prevent the countless other cheats in other sports was an absolute disgrace.

"If I would talk, the Spanish football team would be stripped of the 2010 World Cup" - Dr Eufemiano Fuentes

I've always had suspicions about the 'invincibles'

I was thinking I'd read that before, February

Originally Posted by saffers

VVG2C from Le Prof. Sick of these above average teams being hyped up as legends purely due to 'how hard they work' when in reality its all down to cheating. Drugs and referee purchasing is the only reason Barca won their last 2 european cups and I am sure they will be stripped off them within 10 years.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/foo...leaned-up.html

There is absolutely no chance of that happening even if it was true

Look at the doping court case against Juve in the 90s. They were found guilty but then mysteriously this ruling was overturned despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Nothing ever happened to Juve's league or European titles.

Nothing happened then for the same reason that nothing happened to Inter and other Italian clubs for their European match fixing in the 60s and early 70s. Some clubs are just too powerful

Barca winning trophies because of drugs? why didn't madrid win any then?

Originally Posted by rafabio

Barca winning trophies because of drugs? why didn't madrid win any then?

er, maybe because they weren't heavily involved with fuentes like Barca and guardiola were.

It's all a bit of a coincidence that over the last couple of seasons barcelona have lost this all conquering aura about them eh? It's almost like they're all on a humungous come down or something. From destroying most of europe's best teams to getting their arses handed to them by Chelsea and Bayern Munich all within about 18 months?

http://thelongballtactic.wordpress.c...miano-fuentes/

When Spanish police raided Eufemiano Fuentes’s residence in May 2006 finding doping products and bags of blood, the sport of professional cycling was once again turned on its head

The ramifications were felt far and wide as Jan Ullrich, Marco Pantani and many other names that had been at the top of the sport in the last decade were implicated in the Madrid-based Doctor’s doping network.

Fuentes has since become synonymous with cycling’s ‘dark arts’, as much a by-word for scandal as Festina and Lance Armstrong; but there have often been whispers about the other clients who Dr. Fuentes dealt with. Of the 186 blood bags seized from his clinic in Madrid, how many belonged to athletes from other sports?

Fuentes has stated himself in an interview with a Spanish newspaper that only 30% of his clients were cyclists, so why has cycling been the only sport which has handed out bans to those involved with Fuentes and the police raids that were codenamed Operacion Puerto?

The answer is a tough one to determine. It’s believed that somewhere there lies a mythical list of Fuentes clients which includes footballers and tennis stars. Cyclist Jesus Manzano – the whistleblower who kicked off Operacion Puerto, in much the same way Floyd Landis did with Lance Armstrong – has told Channel 4 News that prominent footballers visited Fuentes.

It is reported that in 2007 FIFA president Sepp Blatter requested to see the documents from Puerto, but no investigation has ever taken place in football or any other sport.

Now, this week Eufemiano Fuentes stands trial for endangering public health. Many had hoped this would be a day when Spanish authorities could strike a blow for clean sport and the extent of Fuentes’s shadowy network of clients would be laid out for all to see. It seems that the Spanish authorities had other ideas though.

In the run up to the hearing, it was announced that the much-anticipated trial would focus only on cycling. This prompted David Howman, the head of the World Anti-Doping Authority to complain to the Daily Telegraph that:

“We have been banging our heads against a brick wall to get access to the evidence that was gathered. It is not only frustrating and disappointing but it also means that many athletes who might be dirty have been allowed to compete.”

At the trial itself today Fuentes again repeated the claim that he treated footballers, tennis players, athletes and boxers. Despite these allegations being made in a 3-hour cross examination the defendant was not asked to elaborate upon these claims.

If Fuentes is accused of public health offences, rather than specifically doping (which Spanish legislation didn’t cover in 2006), then it seems bizarre to only focus on one third of his clients. In turn, it seems that claims from the defendant and the main whistleblower in the case have been investigated when they relate to cycling but ignored when it comes to other sports. If you were of a cynical disposition you may say it was beginning to look like a cover-up. But why would this be?

Some have suggested that, with Madrid bidding for the 2020 Summer Olympics, the last thing Spanish authorities want is for a doping scandal to explode in their faces ahead of the decision in September. The trial also allows Spain to present itself as tough on doping, even if this image does not hold up when you scratch the surface.

Other more shadowy allegations, aired by former FA head Lord Triesman in a Parliamentary select committee hearing in May 2011, involve a doping ring and some “fairly senior people in Spain”.

Could it be that cycling is an easy target? It is far simpler to prosecute Fuentes and focus on cycling – a sport already mired in doping scandals – than seek to open up new scandals in sports which have the perception (fair or otherwise) of being clean.

It may be that cycling has disproportionately more dopers than any other sport, but it is also a sport that conducts far more doping tests than others. Sports journalist and author Daniel Friebe pointed out on Twitter that whilst cycling had taken 4613 out-of-competition blood tests on athletes in 2011, in tennis the number was only 21.

Eufemiano Fuentes’s trial is expected to continue for the next month at least, with witnesses including Tyler Hamilton and Alberto Contador. Whether anyone from any sport except cycling is feeling the heat in the coming weeks remains to be seen.

...

It was relatively big news this week when 3 doctors who worked with Lance Armstrong’s US Postal cycling team received lifetime bans from sport for providing athletes with EPO, blood transfusions and masking agents.

What seems to have gone largely unreported is that one of the dirty trio – Luis Garcia del Moral – was, according to Velonation.com – working as a medical advisor for FC Barcelona and Valencia. Another intriguing link between doping and the world of Spanish football.

Those in cycling know that del Moral is generally considered bad news. In January 2011 Garmin-Slipstream sacked their Directuer Sportif Matt White, after he sent rider Trent Lowe to see del Moral without the team’s knowledge. In an interview with journalist Paul Kimmage in May 2011, Floyd Landis claimed that he paid del Moral to work with him on the logistics of blood tranfusions for the 2005 Tour de France.

As far as I can see, FC Barcelona haven’t made a statement on del Moral’s ban, which prohibits him from working in any sport which has signed up to the WADA code of conduct. It would be interesting to hear why they employed del Moral and what his specific role was within the team.

Del Moral is the third doctor with links to doping to have worked for, or been linked to, FC Barcelona. Pep Guardiola’s doctor Ramon Segura is currently (as far as I can see) still working as the club physician, Segura worked with both Guardiola and Frank de Boer when they tested positive for nandrolone during their playing careers.

In 2006 it was alleged by French newspaper Le Monde that the notorious Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes, of Operacion Puerto fame, had been working with Barcelona and Real Madrid. Numerous footballers were said to have been named in Puerto but, six years on, none of those names have been released to the public, and none have been disciplined by the football authorities.

Originally Posted by Sparky***

er, maybe because they weren't heavily involved with fuentes like Barca and guardiola were.

It's all a bit of a coincidence that over the last couple of seasons barcelona have lost this all conquering aura about them eh? It's almost like they're all on a humungous come down or something. From destroying most of europe's best teams to getting their arses handed to them by Chelsea and Bayern Munich all within about 18 months?

Hmmm......

Not necessarily disagreeing with your more general thesis, though

It's £#%&!ing mental. This bit ffs...

The answer is a tough one to determine. It’s believed that somewhere there lies a mythical list of Fuentes clients which includes footballers and tennis stars. Cyclist Jesus Manzano – the whistleblower who kicked off Operacion Puerto, in much the same way Floyd Landis did with Lance Armstrong – has told Channel 4 News that prominent footballers visited Fuentes.

It is reported that in 2007 FIFA president Sepp Blatter requested to see the documents from Puerto, but no investigation has ever taken place in football or any other sport.

Cheating @#%&!s. Only 30% from Cycling. :shakehead:

The thing that gets me though is players leaving Barca to go elsewhere would surely leak it to their new club/someone if they knew something dodgy was going on. Unless they don't really know and are just being given £#%&!ing god knows in tablet/shake form...

how gutted would you be to find out the 99 euro final was fixed or united were on drugs in the 85 cup final?

£#%&!ing hell... I wish we'd lost two finals to barca because they were on drugs and not horseburgerson.

forget the legal side of it for a minute

the telling stats are surrounding the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.

Spain won more athletics golds there than they had in their entire history up to that point.

Barcelona won the European Cup for the 1st time ever that season too

fast-forward 20 years and it was pretty lucky for Barcelona that their world class triangle of Xavi, Iniesta and Messi all came through the same system and all barely missed a game for about 3 years or something ridiculous. that's some magical formula that, 3 of the best players being able to train and play longer, harder and faster than ordinarily they should be able to.

compare that with say Rooney. Look at how good he was and how good he looked as though he might become around the mid 00s. and then take away all his injuries ...

Originally Posted by dragflick

It's £#%&!ing mental. This bit ffs...



Cheating @#%&!s. Only 30% from Cycling. :shakehead:

The thing that gets me though is players leaving Barca to go elsewhere would surely leak it to their new club/someone if they knew something dodgy was going on. Unless they don't really know and are just being given £#%&!ing god knows in tablet/shake form...

It's not totally inconceivable that the players would be ignorant to it, maybe having transfusions or shots from the club doctor - being told it's vitamin supplements or something. Or maybe they don't want to know; ignorance is bliss etc.

The idea that they would 'leak it' to a new club is highly unlikely. Why would you do that, they'd be cutting their nose off to spite their face.

Wengers just mad because the drugs make the youth teams cum taste funny.

Originally Posted by Sparky***

It's not totally inconceivable that the players would be ignorant to it, maybe having transfusions or shots from the club doctor - being told it's vitamin supplements or something. Or maybe they don't want to know; ignorance is bliss etc.

The idea that they would 'leak it' to a new club is highly unlikely. Why would you do that, they'd be cutting their nose off to spite their face.

Agree they might not know about it if it was going on. "Here Lionel, take your Vitamins... there's a good boy" etc. But if they did, course they'd tell their new club- if a player was at Barca and left under bad circumstances, he'd love to £#%&! them over. If it was/is going on then the players wouldn't have a clue.

Football's obviously a lot different to cycling and tennis in that there's a large number of players that can come and go in a club, compared to those two sports where it's just the individual representing themselves- and would be a £#%&! load easier to cover up.

Hope Big Cesc brings the flake to OT.

wembley 2011 was the peak of this barcelona side wasn't it?

Seems everyone's assuming barca are the only club doping. If its like other sports, it will be every top club. Shit loads of money in the game and no interest from the authorities in exposing any cheating. Given such high reward and low risk of cheating, every club that doesn't cheat is costing itself millions. But I'm sure club chairmen have too much morals to consider such things.

Originally Posted by MagnificentSeven

wembley 2011 was the peak of this barcelona side wasn't it?

and Rome 2009