Alexis Sánchez is facing a “missed-test strike” being imposed on him despite Arsène Wenger admitting Arsenal were at fault for their former player being absent when drug-testers visited the training ground.
The 29-year-old was not at the training ground on Monday when doping control officers arrived because he was completing his move to Manchester United.
However, Sánchez still had a responsibility to inform the FA if he was not going to be at the training ground. It is understood Sánchez has been contacted and asked for his observations and he could be handed a “missed-test strike” — two more of those within the space of a year and he would be liable to a minimum 12-month ban.
The FA will have to decide if the saga surrounding his move to United — and having a medical on that day — is sufficient excuse for not registering his whereabouts. Its rules however are quite clear, saying: “If a player is not going to be at training or is leaving early/arriving late, they must notify the FA in advance and provide a one-hour time slot for that day when they will be available for a drug test.
“A player who fails to adhere to these requirements may incur a missed-test strike, with three strikes within a 12-month rolling period triggering a suspension from football for at least 12 months.”
Advertisement
Wenger said Arsenal will take responsibility for the apparent “whereabouts” violation — the club has no other “strikes”. Manchester City and Bournemouth have previously been fined for three whereabouts strikes, but Wenger said neither Arsenal nor Sánchez had anything to hide.
The case is not in the same category as the incident in 2003, which led to Rio Ferdinand being banned for eight months for failing to take a drugs test.
“On Monday there was a lot going on and it was a special day for Alexis Sánchez,” Wenger said. “You have to do paperwork, you have to travel. It is a special event for him to miss a drugs test because he was certainly busy somewhere else with his agent. Although he’s been tested so many times here, it is no worry for me that he has any doping problem. It was just a bad day for him to be tested.
“Honestly, on the administration side, certainly it will still be our responsibility. On the day he had not moved so maybe it will be down to us. It will be our responsibility. I don’t know what really happened. Usually we always try our best to get our players available. We always coordinate well.
I’m quite relaxed because we have nothing to hide here. We always try our best to cooperate with doping control. I’ve always pushed for football to do more against doping. So I don’t see why we should not cooperate. We try our best. But this was a special day.”
Advertisement
Wenger said such occurrences are rare but that a similar thing had happened previously when Cesc Fàbregas was an Arsenal player and had gone to Spain for medical treatment. “Sometimes it can be difficult to localise the player at the right moment,” he added. “Overall I must say with the number of controls we have, it does not happen a lot.”
The FA, which is responsible for most of testing in England, refused to comment. There is no suggestion that Sánchez sought to evade a test or was even aware of the failure to keep drug-testers informed of his movements.
