Reports are out claiming that Football Association chairman Greg Dyke wants to sit down and have a heart to heart with Arsene Wenger regarding doping in today’s game.
The Arsenal manager accused UEFA of ‘accepting cheating’ when they failed to punish Dinamo Zagreb for having a player found guilty of doping recently.
Midfielder Arijan Ademi tested positive for a banned substance in the wake of Zagreb’s Champions League win over Arsenal in September but only the player received a punishment in the form of a four-year ban.
Croatian giants Dinamo were not penalised at all for the misdemeanour, prompting Wenger to indicate that he had never seen firsthand any of this sort of behaviour during his time as a manager.
“In 30 years of my coaching career, I never got one of my players injected to be more efficient,” he told L’Equipe a few weeks ago.
“I never gave them a product that can improve performance. It is about pride. I’ve played against a lot of teams that were not in this state of mind.”
In relation to those comments, FA chief Dyke is eager to speak with the Frenchman in order to sort out his disagreement with European football’s governing body.
Speaking at the Mirror’s Pride of Sport Awards, Dyke said: “I know Arsene quite well and I will have a chat with him and say, ‘What is it you are saying? What evidence do you have?’
“You can never say that you are confident. I suspect there are people in athletics, in Russian athletics in particular, who said that they were confident. They aren’t confident today, are they?
“So I would never say that I am confident. But I haven’t seen the evidence. And you can only base your position on evidence.
“I have always said that football is fairly clean. So if someone is saying that it is not, someone off Arsene’s stature, then we ought to find out about it.”