MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Late on Saturday, the Daily Mail newspaper said the FIFA was probing doping allegations against all Russian national team members.
"FIFA has simply confirmed that, in close collaboration with WADA, it is still investigating the allegations involving football players in the so-called McLaren report. However, FIFA did not refer to any particular players, since it cannot comment on the status of ongoing investigations," the spokesperson told R-Sport.
The spokesperson stressed that FIFA was interested in completing the probe as soon as possible.
"As far as the FIFA Confederations Cup is concerned, every participating player has been tested through blood and urine in unannounced controls. Both the results of the unannounced and the post-match tests have been negative so far. Furthermore, all players participating in the 2014 FIFA World Cup – including all members of the Russian squad – underwent pre-competition and post-match tests, all of which resulted negative," the spokesperson added.
According to the spokesperson, all samples taken during the Confederations Cup, held in Russia from June 17 to July 2, proved to be negative.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister and Russian Football Union President Vitaly Mutko commented on the allegations and called them nonsense.
"We have already opened up in this topic of doping. These accusations are absolute nonsense. The team has been checked and cross-checked in recent years. What is the problem? I do not see any problems here. But this will continue," Mutko told R-Sport.
The release of the so-called McLaren report in two parts in 2016 has already prompted the International Association of Athletics Federations’s (IAAF) ban on the Russian athletes’s participation in international competitions including the 2016 Summer Olympics, and the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) banned all Russian Paralympic athletes from the 2016 Summer Paralympics and the 2018 Winter Games.
