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Feb 16 - Feb 23,2003 |
High death rate in soccer
Turin magistrate investigates high incident of diseases in players
By Mehrdad Masoudi
Originally Published: 2003-02-02
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Jaap Stam
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An Italian judge is investigating the suspicious death of 70 soccer stars amid fears that drugs their clubs gave them may have triggered their fatal illnesses.
Raffaele Guariniello, a magistrate in Turin, is probing the unusually high incidence of cancer, leukemia and a rare disease of the nervous system among players who have appeared for top clubs such as Juventus, Roma and Milan.
Out of 400 deaths since 1960, Guariniello is investigating 70 suspicious ones. He is researching the records of 24,000 professional Italian players between 1960 and 1996. There is no doubt that many more players are dying of these diseases than members of the public.
The judge believes the consumption of "doping-style substances" by players, with or without their knowledge, is a possible explanation. He began interviewing former players, trainers and relatives in 1999, after several widows approached him for help.
Fears have been raised that soccer players in other parts of Europe could be suffering from similar diseases. If it is true that there is a proved link between drug misuse and soccer, it would have implications for the efforts of several anti-doping agencies to keep soccer drug-free in the continent. Some national anti-doping agencies are writing to their respective soccer authorities to draw their attention to the evidence emerging in Italy.
There seems to be parallels between the diseases afflicting Italian players and those suffered by athletes in East Germany, who were secretly drugged by the Communist authorities. It is not clear what the levels of knowledge about possible side effects of these drugs were.
Stasi files released after the event showed the very dangerous health dangers to athletes who take drugs. The regimes of steroid administration caused severe health problems - including, it appears, premature death - among runners, swimmers and other athletes in the Seventies and Eighties.
The fate of Gianluca Signorini, a defender with Roma, Genoa and Parma, is among those arousing judge Guariniello's suspicion. After giving Italy some of its most spectacular soccer moments of the Nineties, the defender was totally paralyzed by a rare terminal disease.
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