FA chairman Greg Dyke has confirmed he will sit down with Arsene Wenger to ascertain what evidence the Arsenal manager has over the comments about doping in football he has made.
Standard Sport last month revealed that the governing body had asked Wenger to elaborate on comments made in an interview with L’Equipe during the international break.
Dyke intends to be part of those discussions and told the Mirror: “I know Arsene quite well and I will have a chat with him and say: ‘What is it that you are saying? What evidence do you have?’”
In the interview Wenger claimed that he had “never injected my players to make them better” and that he had “played against many teams that weren’t in that frame of mind”. His side had already seen one case of doping in a match against them this season, with Dinamo Zagreb midfielder Arijan Ademi testing positive for steroids after a 2-1 victory in September.
The Arsenal manager has since somewhat distanced himself from the comments over the state of doping in the sport, telling reporters yesterday: “I’m not concerned there is a doping problem in England, not at all.
“I would be absolutely surprised. I spoke in January about the rule and I had a conservation with Uefa about that and they do not specifically make the rule, they follow the rules that are set but I don’t think in England that we have a problem with it.”
However Dyke did not share Wenger’s certainty, adding: “I suspect there are people in athletics – in Russian athletics in particular who said they were confident.
L'Equipe Arsene Wenger Style & Sport Magazine
“They aren’t confident today are they? So I would never say that I am confident. But I haven’t seen the evidence. And you can only base your position on the evidence.
“I have always said that football is fairly clean. So if someone is saying that it is not, someone of Arsene’s stature, then we ought to find out about it.”
