TNT Sports
Italians refuse tests
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Published 23/03/2005 at 14:34 GMT
Ten more Italian players have declined to undergo blood tests this season in addition to AC Milan's Gennaro Gattuso and Giuseppe Pancaro, La Gazzetta dello Sport reported on Wednesday. Gattuso and Pancaro refused to take the optional tests after their sid
Eurosport
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Two players from each team in Serie A and B are required to give compulsory urine tests and voluntary blood tests after each game.
Italian Olympic Committee president Gianni Petrucci called Gattuso and Pancaro's refusal a "morally regrettable episode".
Last week Petrucci publicly invited Juventus club doctor Riccardo Agricola to stand down from his post while he appeals against the guilty verdict handed to him by a Turin judge last November at the end of a trial into doping at the club between 1994 and 1998.
In January 2003, Italian Football Federation (FIGC) head Franco Carraro said anybody who refused to undergo both tests would not be called up for the national team.
With Gattuso currently in training for Italy's World Cup qualifier against Scotland on Saturday, Carraro was forced to fend off accusations that he had suddenly gone soft on the issue.
First he denied ever making such a threat, before later explaining his words had only referred to UEFA's drug-testing programme in the period up to last summer's European championships in Portugal.
Meanwhile, the president of the Italian Footballers Association, Sergio Campana, tried to play down the controversy, calling it "a teething problem".
"With the new collective agreement that comes in from the beginning of next season, blood-testing will become obligatory," he was quoted as saying in Gazzetta dello Sport.
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