Uefa show they could not care less about doping by awarding Super Cup to Russia despite four-year drugs ban

FOOTBALL’S worldwide authorities see themselves as beyond the reach of principle or instruction.

Allowing Russia to host the World Cup two years ago and now Qatar in 2022 was the product of a process riddled with corruption.

Russia have been awarded Super Cup final

Now the latest breach of protocol is simply another sign nothing has changed.

Uefa’s decision to host the 2023 Super Cup in Kazan is a clear dismissal of the World Anti-Doping Agency’s four-year competition ban on Russia for supporting drug-taking in sport.

Now you may ask: What the heck is the Super Cup?

Well, it’s a match between the Champions League and Europa League winners and is the latest move in a never-ending power struggle between Uefa and Fifa.

Really, it’s a jape — akin to a match-up between the winners of the Premier League and the Championship.

You will notice similarities between Fifa’s World Club final and Uefa’s future baby and that is not accidental.

For on top of their sallies with Wada, they are in their own permanent battle for supremacy.

So through a kink in the proposal for a four-year ban, Russia are allowed to take part in the European Championships later this year.

Fifa are also eyeing the possibility of Russian participation in the 2022 World Cup, probably under an assumed name.

Putin-land and a skull and crossbones flag might be the solution.

The use of illegal drugs was not so much an infraction that somehow escaped approved tests, but a flagrant government policy to boost their sporting performances.

Drilling a hole through a lab wall so a steroid-tainted bottle of urine could be swapped for a ‘clean’ one was one tactic.

It was a schoolboy wheeze that emphasised drug use was, and probably still is, systemic in Russian sport.

As for footballers, it’s hardly credible that among the runners, weightlifters, cyclists, swimmers, even a curler or two, there aren’t more who have failed tests.

Deep suspicions dogged them at their home 2018 World Cup where the team’s stamina was judged close to superhuman.

You would expect our game’s leaders to stand alongside other major sports, including Seb Coe in athletics, to fight this problem.

But football, unfortunately, does not back the stance drugs are a grave danger to health and, left to thrive, would cripple sport, too. For years no one has quite trusted the integrity of even the greatest stars.

No wonder we have all become cynical, when a list of the guilty includes Diego Maradona, Maria Sharapova, Ben Johnson, Lance Armstrong and Shane Warne.

Russia, however, by busting every rule has become a rogue nation.

Approval, no, more than that, the supervision of dope-dosing seen to be tacitly accepted by football’s most powerful men is a dereliction of duty.

And Uefa chiefs have chosen evil over sense in nominating Kazan as the stage for their silly cup final.

Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk