Arsene Wenger says he would like to see blood testing introduced across European football to help combat drug cheats.
The director of Spain's anti-doping watchdog said on Thursday that the agency is “gathering information” about allegations that Real Sociedad players used performance-enhancing substances.
Wenger has also been keeping an eye on the trial of Eufemiano Fuentes, the doctor allegedly at the centre of a global sports doping scandal, and believes it could have far-reaching consequences.
"It is very difficult for me to believe that you have 740 players at the World Cup and you come out with zero problems"
“What I'm concerned about in the trial of the Spanish doctor is that he is in front of the justice just to see how he did the doping. They are not interested at all in who he has doped,” the Arsenal manager said.
“They have found pockets of blood but they don't even ask who it belongs to. The only thing we know is that the former chairman of Real Sociedad, who came out, is involved in that. The justice should go deeper.
“Honestly, I don't think we do enough in football. It is very difficult for me to believe that you have 740 players at the World Cup and you come out with zero problems.
“When you have a doping control at Uefa, they do not take blood, they take only urine. I have asked many times in Geneva [for that to be changed],” Wenger added. “Sometimes you have to wait for two hours after the game, so blood could be a lot quicker.
“We could go much deeper into control. I hope we do not have a big problem with doping, but we have to try to find out and see how deep we can go into control.
“Look at psychological tests that have been done on people who are at the top in all sports. Ask them if they would take a product that would guarantee them a gold medal or a world championship but mean that they died in the next five years, and 50 per cent people of say they would take it. That is quite scary.
“That is absolutely massive, that is how far people are ready to go to win, in all sports, not just football. If you go to amateur level and do that test, only two per cent say they would take it. We are at the level where people are ready to do anything to win.
“Yes, I would support [blood testing]. Uefa is ready to do it, but it poses some ethical problems because everyone has to accept that they will check the blood and not everybody is ready to do that.”
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