Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger claims football has a widespread and undetected doping problem

The Frenchman has a firm anti-doping stance but says his teams have come up against opponents who 'weren’t in that frame of mind'

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger (Getty Images)

Arsene Wenger believes that football is afflicted by a serious doping problem that remains largely undetected by the sport’s authorities.

The Arsenal manager believes his team’s Champions League group stage defeat to a “doped” Dynamo Zagreb earlier this season was unfair following the revelation that one of the club’s midfielders, Arijan Ademi, failed a post-match drugs test.

Ademi’s ‘B’ sample is currently being investigated by Uefa, European football’s governing body, who have scheduled a hearing on the case for 19 November.

Ahead of the investigation into the midfielder's postive sample, and amid the doping scandal currently engulfing athletics, Wenger has reaffirmed his belief that a widespread problem exists within football.

“I try to be faithful to the values that I believe to be important in life and to pass them on to others,” Wenger told L’Equipe.

“In 30 years as a manager, I’ve never had my players injected to make them better. I never gave them any product that would help enhance their performance.

“I’m proud of that,” he added. “I’ve played against many teams that weren’t in that frame of mind.”

Wenger has regularly called for more anti-doping tests to be carried out in football throughout his career and once claimed that the sport is “full of legends who are in fact cheats”.

Dynamo Zagreb's Arijan Ademi in action against Arsenal earlier this season (Getty Images)

“For me, the beauty of sport is that everyone wants to win, but there will only be one winner,” he told L'Equipe.

“We have reached an era in which we glorify the winner, without looking at the means or the method. And, 10 years later we realise the guy was a cheat.

“During that time, the one that came second suffered. He didn’t get recognition. And, with all that’s been said about them, they can be very unhappy.”

Earlier this week, a report by the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) accused Russia of a “state-sponsored” doping programme designed to artificially enhance the performance of the country’s athletes.

Dick Pound, former Wada president and head of the investigation Russia, claimed that his commission’s findings were likely to be the “tip of the iceberg”.

“Russia is not the only country and athletics is not the only sport with a doping problem,” said Pound, while presenting the report to a press conference on Monday.