More than 150 footballers -- including at least one current Russia int'l -- "were implicated in sport's biggest drugs scandal on Wednesday," according to Ben Rumsby of the London TELEGRAPH. Days after it was revealed that the entire Russia squad for the 2014 World Cup was being investigated by FIFA, the man who "exposed the scale of state-sponsored doping in the country suggested a separate cover-up system had been in place for football." Richard McLaren said, "That gives rise to the suspicion that there is a bank of clean samples and that it's been used with respect to footballers." McLaren urged FIFA "to appoint a special investigator to look into the case." McLaren announced that in December, he found around 33 footballers -- "most of them Russian" -- were among "more than 1,000 athletes who benefited from a scheme to cover up positive drugs tests." He said that number "had grown more than five times in the interim." McLaren: "There are 155 samples awaiting analysis which were seized by WADA. We also reported those to FIFA." McLaren said that his "strong suspicion was that those samples were either manipulated to prevent positive test results" or that banned substances would be found in them (TELEGRAPH, 6/28). RT reported on Monday, the press office for FIFA said that "every player's doping test for the Brazil 2014 World Cup had in fact returned negative results." FIFA's press office said, "All players participating in the 2014 FIFA World Cup -- including all members of the Russian squad -- underwent pre-competition and post-match tests, all of which were negative" (RT, 6/28).
