The Frenchman, who was already suspended, tested positive at the end of the match between Udinese and Juventus, a match on the first day of the tournament in which he did not even take to the field.
The Italian League is again dealing with doping. In a case involving a world champion: Yesterday afternoon, the National Anti-Doping Court suspended Paul Pogba on remand, after he tested positive for synthetic testosterone in a test conducted by the Rome Anti-Doping Laboratory after the Udinese-Juventus match, which was held on August 20. In which the French did not enter the field. Cycles and Appeals: 22 years ago, the same match led to Edgar Davids being disqualified for using Nandrolone. Now Pogba will be able to ask for a counter-analysis, but the opposite of the first test is actually an unlikely hypothesis. If the result is confirmed, the standard procedure will be opened: investigation by the Anti-Doping Prosecutor’s Office – dismissal, plea bargaining or referral – possibility of sports prosecution before the TNA.
Voluntary or not
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The maximum risk of disqualification is frightening: four years, with age being a death blow to an “octopus” career. This will be reduced by half in the case of “unintentional”. But this is not the time to throw ourselves into expectations. We should not forget that just one year ago, after we tested positive for the metabolite Clostebol, from the same family of anabolic steroids, Atalanta player José Luis Palomino was cleared by TNA. He was aided in this case by jurisprudence which, in the case of the Clostebol metabolite, sometimes accepted the explanation for the use of a therapeutic ointment. But the matter remains open: there was a hearing at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, and now he awaits a ruling.
Retroactively only if…
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One thing we do know for sure: Pogba and Juventus have not applied for a medical exemption out of a health issue in recent weeks. A special committee of Nado Italia, the organization that manages anti-doping operations in our country, approves or rejects the request. It appears that this mechanism has not been activated. Depending on the procedures established to guarantee the athlete, a retrospective declaration can also be requested, but this only happens if it is necessary “to carry out emergency or urgent treatment” or “if there was not enough time, there was no possibility due to other exceptional circumstances it was not possible to It is possible to submit the application before the check.
The “grandfather” of steroids
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Or finally, in “rare and exceptional circumstances, given the purposes of the WADA Code, it would be clearly unfair not to grant a retrospective exemption.” The “suspend” decision indicates that there was no demand even in the past. However, the defensive line of the player and the club has not yet been deciphered. For months, Pogba has been suffering from a series of injuries that kept him out of action for most of the season, forcing him to miss the appointment with his national team for the World Cup in Qatar. In the Tna press release, reference was also made to an IRMS (mass spectrometry) assay that gave results “consistent” with the first analytical result. Testosterone is sort of the “grandfather” of steroids, but its use has actually been discouraged in recent years/decades due to the ability of control systems to identify the substance. The substance for which Alex Schwatzer is still disqualified, in a controversial story that saw the sports authorities (WADA and the IAAF have always confirmed his guilt) and the judicial authorities (the investigating judge in Bolzano, Walter Bellino, saved the position of the walker “for not having committed the crime” stating Also to the hypothesis of manipulation (with a high degree of rational credibility).
“anomaly”
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In his famous confession to Oprah Winfrey, Lance Armstrong additionally admitted to using EPO, as well as testosterone. In football cases, there are few precedents. Not in the Italian League. To find a recent case you have to go to Africa: a year ago, FIFA excluded international player Sabri Ali Mohamed for four years. Going back a little, we can remember that in 2015, a study conducted on 879 Champions League players from the period 2008-2013 highlighted “abnormal values” of testosterone in 7.7% of self-controlled subjects. However, UEFA said there was no certainty about the foreign origin of the substance, concluding that it was “not a doping”. Now those two words, football and testosterone, are once again intertwined in the name of the world’s best player. For months, Pogba has been chasing a game to play in full: but now, he will have to play a game away from the football pitch.
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