In barely twenty-four hours, the terms have changed.
Tuesday, it was a question of “doping products”, Wednesday simply of legal “pharmacological substances”.
Former Italian international Dino Baggio, former teammate of recently deceased Gianluca Vialli and Sinisa Mihajlovic, has been the subject of intense controversy in recent hours over the issue of doping in professional football.
Basically, his goal was the following by agreeing to respond to journalists after the death of his two former colleagues.
Yes or no, have the effects of certain products ingested during his career harmed his health and that of his partners?
A statement he recalled on Wednesday from the Gazzetta dello Sport.
“I think it is necessary to investigate the pharmacological substances taken at that time”, adds the one who evolved with Vialli at Juve and with Mihajlovic at Lazio Rome.
But this interview was also an opportunity to backpedal on statements made the day before.
"Knowing whether supplements can create long-term problems in our body"
“There has always been doping”, he had dropped with the TV channel Tv7.
This Wednesday, with the Gazzetta dello Sport, the forbidden word had disappeared.
The former glory has come off surprisingly.
Assuring not to have wanted to mention possible doping practices, but the “supplements” and the drugs received during his fifteen years of pro football.
“Imagine that the doctors could give us doping substances: we had controls every three or four days… No, simply, I would like to know from the scientists if the (legal) supplements that we take can, in the long term, create problems in our body, ”explained Dino Baggio, 51, who notably won the Europa League three times, with Juventus and Parma.
Scandals in the 1990s
“My reasoning stems from the pain I feel for the disappearance of Vialli, whom I have always considered a friend and who helped me so much, of Mihajlovic and other boys who, like me, played football in the 90's. "
The reputation of Italian football has been severely tarnished during these decades by suspicions of doping, particularly at EPO.
Juventus Turin in 1996 – where Gianlucia Vialli, Alessandro Del Piero and Didier Deschamps notably played – was particularly singled out, a doctor and pharmacist who ended up being sentenced by the transalpine justice in 2004.
Vialli has never admitted to using EPO.
He had, however, confided before the judges to resort before certain matches to cocktails of high-dose drugs without medical need.
As a reminder, he died on January 6, at the age of 58, from pancreatic cancer, and Mihajlovic died on December 16, at the age of 53, after having fought leukemia in recent years.
"I would like science to be able to give us answers on the drugs that have been administered to us, to recover from an injury or regain energy," says Baggio (60 caps) who also expressed his concerns. concerning the chemicals used to maintain lawns.
