Italian Drug Investigators to Summon Vialli, Del Piero
Copyright � 1998 Nando.net
Copyright � 1998 Reuters
ROME (Aug 11, 1998 - 20:36 EDT) -- Italian anti-doping investigators said Tuesday night they wanted to interview Chelsea's Gianluca Vialli and Juventus' Alessandro Del Piero in the wake of allegations by AS Roma coach Zdenek Zeman.
Zeman had been summoned before the national Olympic committee (CONI), which in Italy also doubles as the country's sports ministry, after claiming last week that drugs were being used in the Serie A.
He also expressed amazement at the muscle development on present and former Juventus stars Del Piero and Vialli. Del Piero and Juventus have subsequently announced legal proceedings against him for defamation.
But after a two-hour session before CONI's anti-doping enquiry, Zeman seemed satisfied with the outcome, saying: "The people I have spoken to are keen to understand the problem and to solve it."
Ugo Longo, who heads the CONI enquiry, said he and his colleagues were taking Zeman's comments seriously and added they would now be summoning both Vialli and Del Piero, among others, to appear before them.
Longo said: "The inquiry cannot ignore the cry of alarm from someone who lives in the world of football. Our aim is to make things clear as soon as possible using all the means available to us.
"Zeman spoke about products without being able to specify what they were.
"Certainly, they are not among those substances considered as doping. But he reported certain facts which in his opinion are inexplicable, such as certain improvements in performance and muscle-development.
"It was an interesting meeting and one that raised a series of problems which are of interest to the anti-doping inquiry."
For his part, Zeman emerged from the meeting warning that footballers in Italy could even risk death from doping.
"New pharmaceuticals are being used as experiments on footballers," he said. "I don't think we should wait for someone to die.
"I think that this (CONI) enquiry will produce results. If someone has made a mistake, preoceedings will be taken against them."
He went on: "Doping means any substance which causes changes in the human organism, and in the current state of affairs, there's no reason to think that the only ones which cause damage are those on the banned list."
Zeman said the situation was worse abroad, but that in Italy "many substances are being used which didn't exist two years ago, and in two years' time there will be new ones.
"The important thing is to understand whether these substances do cause any changes in the body."
Referring to creatine, a natural energy-builder which is found in beef and other meat, he said: "It makes sense to prescribe it if a player is not well, otherwise 'no'.
"Twenty grams of creatine are like eating 10 kilos of meat, and I don't know whether that's good for you or not."
Zeman has also been summoned by Raffaele Guariniello, a state prosecutor in Juventus' home town of Turin who specialises in public health matters.
The coach welcomed the move, saying: 'It's only right that the civil justice should be involved because it is an ethical problem that concerns everyone, and not just those in the world of football.'
The moves came as Vialli changed tack towards to the Czech coach, having previously described him as a terrorist who ought to be banned.
But in a television interview from London, to be shown in Italy on Friday, Vialli said: "I'm not a saint, but I'm not a hypocrite either.
"The problem is that when someone calls you into question in such a gratuitous way, there is always the doubt in some people's minds that there could be some truth in it.
"And after 16 years in football, I don't like being called into question by Mr. Zeman, someone who I have never had the pleasure of talking to and who is using my name to further his personal crusade.
"Which in truth is also a fair crusade," he added, "because it's only right to question whether some people in football are breaking the rules."
But he added: "Nobody has behaved like Zeman before, like a bull in a china shop."
