World Cup 2014: Costa Rica angry at FIFA for drug testing seven players

Costa Rica manager Jorge Luis Pinto and the country’s Football Federation have been outraged by Fifa’s decision to submit seven Costa Rican players to drug tests after the the team upset Italy 1-0, according to reports.

Fifa rules stipulate that two players from each team need to be tested after a match so its decision to test seven players from Costa Rica has raised eyebrows. Argentine legend Diego Maradona, for one, has leaped to Costa Rica’s defense, and accused the sports’ governing body of discrimination.

CNN IBN reported that Maradona said the drug tests show a lack of respect for Costa Rica’s players.

“Why test seven players from Costa Rica and not seven from Italy?” Maradona said. “It’s against the rules. Two players from each team are supposed to undergo doping controls. I know what I’m talking about because it happened to me. But seven players? I’ve never seen something like that.

The Costa Rica players were not fazed by the tests, though. “It seems a little bit excessive to me, but we can’t do anything about it,” team captain Bryan Ruiz said . “We’ve got nothing to hide. We have trained well, without taking any banned substances. It’s partly that people can’t believe what we’re doing, I think that’s it, They ordered the tests, we didn’t have a problem with taking them, but perhaps seven is excessive.”

However, Pinto was all pumped up and said that they have nothing to hide.

“We love it, we don’t feel fear, on the contrary, we like it. There is a premise about this, why they are doing doping tests to Costa Rica. This is the question I made myself at the first moment, and it is because we are running, Costa Rica runs, and runs, and all my teams run and I congratulate the players for this. They can go on doing doping tests to us,” he said

FIFA defended the decision by claiming that the extra five players were called as they hadn’t undergone pre-competition testing. As reported by ESPNFC , in a statement posted by Football Italia, FIFA explained that two Costa Rica players were ordered for normal post-match tests, while the five others had not been subject to pre-competition testing.