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Costa Rica angry with Fifa for drug-testing seven players

Monday, 23 June 2014


Jorge Luis Pinto and the Costa Rican Football Federation are furious at Fifa for ordering seven of their team's players to undergo drug tests in the aftermath of the famous World Cup win over Italy.
Diego Maradona has accused world football's governing body of discriminating against Costa Rica and Pinto, the manager, has made public his displeasure at the abnormal procedure, according to the guardian.
Two players from every team are required for doping control after matches but Fifa requested that five additional Costa Ricans were tested. Bryan Ruiz, who scored the only goal of Friday's game that confirmed Costa Rica's fairytale qualification to the last 16, was one of them and the others were Keylor Navas, Celso Borges, Christian Bolaños, the substitute Marco Ureña and the unused Diego Calvo and Michael Barrantes.
Fifa say that the mass procedure was necessary because some of the Costa Rica players had been unavailable for the mandatory pre-tournament tests. But there is indignation within the Costa Rican setup as they cannot understand why Fifa chose the moments after one of the greatest victories in the nation's history to carry out the tests. Fifa, they say, could have chosen any other time since the squad arrived in Brazil.