Arsene Wenger on doping in football: Arsenal boss continues crusade against performance enhancing drugs by calling for a stronger response in football
Arsene Wenger believes football's authorities may finally be starting to take a stronger stance against doping, after he has made repeated calls for the issue to be taken more seriously.
The Arsenal boss expressed his hope that Fifa and Uefa will do more to ensure football does not suffer from the kind of doping scandal currently being suffered by athletics.
"The message is that we have to all fight against doping because you and I celebrated super champions [in other sports] who were in fact maybe only cheats," Wenger told a press conference.
"And when you're in sport you suffer when you don't win, so at least you want to know that the guy who wins is better than you without cheating.
"I've said many times that in sport we've celebrated heroes who were in fact only cheats. We hace to make sure that doesn't happen in football. For a long time we absolutely ignored doping.
"I alerted a few times the authorities…For a long time I think we were maybe too neglecting of the problem. Now I think Uefa, Fifa, they will tackle the problem really seriously in the coming years."
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Earlier this season the Frenchman was more critical of football's response to doping – accusing Uefa of "basically accepting" doping with a rule that requires two players to have violated rules before a club can be punished.
Dinamo Zagreb's Arijan Ademi was banned for four years after testing positive for banned substances following a Champions League tie with Arsenal, but the Croatian club faced no further sanction.
Wenger was also asked by the FA to explain comments made to L'Equipe inferring he had "played against many teams" that may have used performance-enhancing drugs.