After the deaths of Sinisa Mihajlovic and Gianluca Vialli, the dubious statements of Dino Baggio, regarding the attention to the substances they took in the 80s and 90s in professional football, caused a stir. “It’s not that we took strange things, there was anti-doping and we did it every Sunday. But we need to see if these supplements have not caused long-term damage”. These are the words of the former footballer Baggio a Tv7 a few days after Vialli’s death from pancreatic cancer. The same doubts about the “substances” ingested were also raised by Florin Raducioiu, a former striker from Bari, Verona, Milan and Brescia. Raducioiu wore the Rossoneri shirt between 1993 and 1994.
Pink drip before matches but they were just supplements
“We were dripping with a pink liquid,” Raducioiu told Romanian TV Orange Sport – and we didn’t know what we were getting. We have always been told that it was about vitamins, about glucose. We used to drip with this pink liquid on the eve of matches, I remember it perfectly. And in Milan we took other things, even pills. I will call the doctor in Brescia to find out what medicines I have taken”.
And so Raducioiu did: “I phoned Dr. Fabio De Nard – he said to Gazzetta dello Sport – who was then working in Brescia and headed the medical staff. In that cocktail that was administered to us in the vein there were vitamin B, vitamin C and a substance to reduce the process of muscle fatigue. The pink color depended on vitamin B. I felt reassured: we took supplements, substances against free radicals, all absolutely legal”.
