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Sport

28th May 2018

International team captains write letter FIFA to lift Peru player’s World Cup cocaine ban

Carl Kinsella

World Cup

The three captains of Peru’s Group C rivals have written a letter to FIFA asking the Peru captain Paolo Guerrero be allowed to play in the 2018 World Cup.

Guerrero was originally banned from football for six months after testing positive for cocaine, but last week the Court of Arbitration for Sport increased the ban to 14 months, ruling Guerrero out of this summer’s tournament.

Guerrero purportedly ingested the banned substances because it was in a tea he drank.

What makes the ban so shocking is that the CAS has even acknowledged that Guerrero did not consume the cocaine knowingly, and did not seek to gain an advantage.

Hugo Lloris, Mile Jedinak and Simon Kjaer — the captains of France, Australia and Denmark respectively — have written a letter to football’s governing body to allow Guerrero, who is 34, to play.

“We respectfully ask the Fifa Council to show compassion,” Jedinak, Kjaer and Lloris wrote in a letter released by FIFPro, the world football players’ union. “In our view it would be plainly wrong to exclude him from what should be a pinnacle of his career. We strongly believe a temporary interruption would be an equitable and rightful solution.”

FIFPro has also released its own statement, which reads: “FIFPro considers the ban unfair and disproportionate, and the latest example of a World Anti-Doping Code that too often leads to inappropriate sanctions, especially when it has been established that there was no intent to cheat.”

The story is major news in Peru, who will this summer compete in their first World Cup for 36 years. Many Peruvians have taken to the streets to protest the decision, and national news stations are constantly broadcasting updates on the situation — a bit like Peru’s version of Saipan.