How Can We Tell If Someone Is On Steroids?

There’s no sure way other than a blood test and a urine test, but there are suspected signs that are repeated time and time again in users. These include;

Young Players Who Peak Early & Decline Quicker/Players Who Peak For One Or Two Seasons

One suspected sign of steroid use is a meteoric rise and a fall from grace that’s just as quick, as the body cannot handle the substances over a prolongued period of time.

Players that come to mind include Jack Wilshere, Michael Owen, El Shaarawy, Wayne Rooney, Adriano, Brazilian Ronaldo, Balotelli, Micah Richards, Jamie Vardy, Milito, Veron, Ryan Babel, Fernando Torres, Denilson, Feddy Adu and Gareth Bale. Although we are not accusing any player and no evidence has ever been found to suggest they take steroids.

Wayne Rooney came into the game at 16 with the body of a stocky full grown man, his hairline was already fading away and after around 25 when he should’ve been in his peak, he barely played another decent game again.

Micah Richards looked like the greatest athlete to ever grace the game at 18, yet multiple knee injuries, too much muscle and a general decline of performances by 23 saw his future die fast.

Adriano was the worlds most unstoppable striker for around 2 years, then declined rapidly.

Jack Wilshere was playing for Arsenal at 16 and dominated Barcelona recieving plaudits from Pep Guardiola at just 19 years old. Fast forward to 2019 and Jack’s career has gone in the complete opposite direction. It’s hard to believe someone can be worse in their physical prime than they were when they were a teenager, simply makes no sense.

Repeat Long Term Injuries

Jurgen Klopp claimed that steroids is not an issue in football, yet every team he has managed has had major long term and repeat injuries. We’re not saying Klopp is guilty, but there are some suspect features with the clubs that he is at.

Long term injury list: Gundogan, Reus, Blaszczykowski , Gotze, Hummels, Chamberlain, lallana, it’s rare for players to be out for 6 months or more repeatably. When taking steroids it’s well known that the muscles become too big and strong for the ligaments which leads to major repeat injuries. Not to mention that Klopps Dortmund and Liverpool sides both enormously over-achieved whilst running a ridiculous amount multiple times per week without signs of fatigue. But it is also entire possible that Klopp pushes his players hard resulting in injuries but improved performance.

Klopps rival and former drug cheat Pep Guardiola has had a similar experience. Since arriving at Manchester City long term injuries include Mendy, Gundogan, Kompany, John Stones, De Bruyne, Claudio Bravo and Aguero. Long term injuries do happen in football and we are not suggesting Pep Guardiola encourages his players to cheat but there is a noticable trend.

One thing that a lot of people have noted is how Pep Guardiola always sends his players to Ramon Cugat known as the Messi of medicine, a Barcelona based doctor who helped him get over a hamstring injury and who he encouraged his Barcelona and Manchester City players to use.

At Bayern Pep did not have full control over the players. They used a different doctor – Muller-Wohlfahrt. According to Muller-Wohlfahrt, Guardiola had told him: “It cannot be that injuries here last six weeks but in Spain only a fortnight.”

With the talk from Graham Hunter of Xavi recieving growth hormones, could it be that Guardiola is sending his players to Barcelona to recieve similar treatment which enables his players to recover quicker? Again it could be that Guardiola simply trusts the man who helped him and there is no wrong doing.

Unusual Success

As we mentioned, Klopps sides always seem to over-achieve, this is usually a sure sign that someone has been “enhanced” in order to drastically improve performance overnight. This could also be because he is a superb manager we must say, but there are question marks.

Real Sociedad was one example of a team over-achieving but the greatest ever has to be Leicester City.

Leicester City Win The Premier League After Fighting Relegation Just 12 Months Earlier!

It was the fairytale story. Leicester City with their tiny budget and lesser known players managed to win against all odds, beating out the much larger teams packed with superstars. How did they do this?

Lets take nothing away from Leicester, firstly they out-worked everybody, secondly everyone else seemed poor that year, thirdly they’re Leicester City, even if they took every steroid imaginable they still deserve credit for what they did.

Going from 41 points to 81 points is not easy, especially when you don’t have the best players. In fact they had the players no one else wanted.

So is there anything to suggest they were doping?

Firstly there is the Dr Mark Bonar story. Dr Mark Bonar admitted to having 150 sports people as clients. He administered EPO and HGH to Chelsea, Arsenal, Birmingham and Leicester City players according to his statements.

Secondly there’s the drastic improvements, after 13 games into the season, compared to the previous season Jamie Vardy went from;

Scoring 1 goal to scoring 13 goals

Scoring a goal every 889 minutes to scoring a goal every 88 minutes

Taking 14 shots compared to 44 shots

Improving shot conversion rate by 25%

Vardy is also 6% body fat, not advised for football or any sport, he also has a 70cm jump, the average NBA player has a 71cm jump.

It’s again entirely possible that Vardy worked on his game over the summer and came back stronger. However Vardy was 28 at the time, if a 19 year old came back with such improvements maybe we could justify it by saying they grew, developed, got used to the league etc. But for a 28 year old to have the season of his life out of nowhere is impossible to ignore as anything else but suspect. Especially when he was on par with Messi and Ronaldo for much of the season. It’s also hard to believe that a player who would soon be one of the best strikers in the world can be in non-league football not scoring 50 goals per season. Put Lionel Messi in a non-league team and he scores 100 goals per season. Leading up to Vardy’s stellar title winning season, the three years prior he scored 4 goals, 16 goals and 5 goals. The inconsistency is eye opening and raises questions.

It’s undoubtable that Kante, Mahrez and Vardy were the stars of the team. But the remainder of the squad was made up of players who were LET GO by their former teams as they were deemed NOT GOOD ENOUGH!

For those players to come together to form a title winning team goes against all logic. If Man City were to sell Bravo, Foden, Kompany, Danilo, Zinchenko and Jesus to Cardiff, Cardiff would probabaly have finished 8th this season at best. That’s the best team in the league giving their 2nd string players over to a relegation team and I still cannot see them winning the league. Leicester didn’t even have that, they had the 2nd tier players from sides that were not title winners and then went from relegation battles to title winners in 12 months, that doesn’t add up. But again without evidence we must say Leicester City could’ve got the better of everyone fair and square that season.

It brings us back to Marcel Desaillys comments 19 years ago. Claiming that doping is in football, but it’s being done by individuals not clubs.

Is Leicester City what happens when all of the players decide to take steroids together?