Wenger explains drug testing comments

Arsene Wenger has labelled football’s current drug testing procedures “superficial” and called for the game’s authorities to follow the example set by other sports.

The Football Association asked the Arsenal manager to explain previous comments, in which he said he had “never injected my players to make them better”, but suggested he had faced opposition sides who were not “in that frame of mind”.

Wenger responded, saying: “I am open to talking to the FA of course.

“The doping problem has suddenly turned up in track and field as well, we have a problem in cycling, and then [to] think that we in football are immune because they are football players is absolutely wrong.

“I want deeper tests, better tests because what we test is superficial. What we want as well is that when people are caught that they are punished – and that the clubs are punished as well.

“We have to tackle this problem and not close our eyes, because it is a little bit not reasonable to think that just because we are football we have no problems with it.”

Wenger witnessed football’s drug testing in action when Dinamo Zagreb’s Arijan Ademi failed a drug test after the Croatian side beat Arsenal 2-1 in the Champions League.

But the Frenchman criticised the length of time taken in Champions League testing procedures, saying: “When you play away in the Champions League, most of the time we lose two hours when there is doping control because people cannot fulfil the tests.

“With a little blood test it takes a minute and you can test much more.

“We sit sometimes on the airplane and wait for half an hour or an hour until the guys who have the tests can come back and fly back. You come back at 4am because the tests last too long. It is simple, why can we not do it? In every other sport they do it.”