Russia’s new World Cup hero, Denis Cheryshev, was forced to deny taking banned substances after his own father was reported as saying he was injected with “growth hormone” before the tournament.

The Russian Sport Weekend magazine said that Dmitri Cheryshev, a manager who was himself a former international, made the potentially-damaging remarks in an interview while his son was sidelined during the build-up to Russia 2018.

Use of growth hormone without a medical exemption is a doping offence punishable with a ban of up to four years and Cheryshev was asked about quotes that appeared in Sport Weekend almost a year earlier.

The 27-year-old, who will carry the hopes of 144 million Russians on Sunday in the biggest match of his career against Spain, said: “I don’t know where the journalist got this from. Maybe they didn’t understand my father; maybe they didn’t understand what was going on. I have never used any prohibited substances.”

That was after the deputy director general of of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency, Margarita Pakhnotskaya, told Telegraph Sport the organisation would “study carefully” the quotes initially attributed to Cheryshev’s father.