“Nothing has changed in football. Those who are afraid now should have thought about it sooner»- Corriere.it

Tomorrow, Tuesday February 7, Zdenek Zeman I’ll go back to talking about football and doping in the appointment with Le Iene, a prime time broadcast on Italia 1. In 1998 the Bohemian technician had denounced il soccer that had to come out of pharmacies.

In an interview withEspressoZeman – who had been an athletic trainer before becoming a coach – had expressly spoken of muscle explosions of some soccer playersand in particular of some of the Juventus (it was the years of trial of the doctor Riccardo Agricola

who in 2004 will be convicted and then acquitted on appeal in 2005 of the charges of administration of Epo and sports fraud): an astonishment that begins with Gianluca Vialli and reaches up to Alessandro Del Piero: I who have practiced various sports thought that certain results could only be obtained with bodybuilding, emphasizing the fear that certain practices may not have immediate damage but who can exclude that the consequences for the athletes will not manifest themselves after many years?.

The correspondents of the show went to look for Zeman in the light of the disappearance of Gianluca Vialli – and even before that of Sinisa Mihajlovic – and the statements of many former players who expressed their fears regarding the substances – legitimate at the time – taken at the time in which they played. Among the first to talk about it was Dino Baggio, former midfielder of the national team and vice-champion of the world in the United States in 1994 who, on the microphones of Tv7had launched an appeal: We should investigate a little about the substances taken during those timeswe should see if certain supplements, over time, are good for you or not. I’m scared too because it’s happening to too many players. A position also confirmed by the former Ds of Salernitana, and former footballer, Walter Sabatini: There has been a very long death of players for which the suspicions are consistent and even justifiable, also linked to methods adopted once.

Even the former world champion Marco Tardelli he recalled, in the interview with Corriere della Serathe times of Mico’s (a respiratory analeptic, able precisely to increase the respiratory act, explains Lamberto Boranga, a former goalkeeper who later graduated in Biology and Medicine).

We took drugs without question: I hope to be lucky, but I don’t see many centenarians in sport, explained Tardelli. Even Massimo Brambati, former defender of Turin, Empoli, Bari and Palermo and now prosecutor, recalled: I’m afraid too, twenty years ago I said it and I received a letter from the FIGC threatening me. There were coaches who got angry if you didn’t get a drip. They gave substances that at the time were not considered doping. Today when I hear certain situations that happen to footballers of my period, I entrust myself to God….

And starting from these themes, the Hyena Filippo Roma interviews Zeman and Brambati. The bohemian tends not to cast suspicion on the premature deaths of Mihajlovic and Vialli (Diseases come to everyone), but underlines how in 25 years since his first complaint, in my opinion nothing has changed, unfortunately. These kids thinking about it now might have been thinking about it then, wondering what they were getting and why. Late today.

Brambati increases the doserecalling Micoren and another substance, Anemina, but also emphasizing that they worry him all drips that I did before the games, I don’t know exactly what could have been there, except that they told me that there was some sugar or that there was this adrenal cortex, subsequently banned, substances which then prevented him from sleeping the night.