ZURICH: There were no positive doping tests at this summer’s Confederations Cup in Russia, global football body FIFA announced on Monday.

FIFA said a total of 379 tests and 854 player samples were collected in what it called the largest anti-doping programme in the history of the eight-team tournament, which finished at the start of this month.

The event acts as a dress rehearsal for next year’s World Cup in the same country.

“All participating players were tested through blood and urine in unannounced controls and, additionally, two players per team were tested by FIFA anti-doping officers after each of the competition’s 16 matches,” said FIFA in a statement.

FIFA added that the samples were analysed at laboratories accredited by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), mostly at the one in Lausanne, Switzerland.

The competition featured Germany, Chile, New Zealand, Australia, Cameroon, Mexico, Portugal and Russia. With one year to go before the World Cup, Germany won the Confederations Cup with a 1-0 defeat of South American champions Chile in the July 2 final.

During the World Cup warm-up fresh allegations surfaced of doping in Russian football.

Canadian sports lawyer Richard McLaren, the author of WADA’s explosive report into Russian doping, told German broadcaster ARD he has new evidence suggesting that positive tests taken from Russian players were swopped with clean samples.

McLaren said WADA had seized 155 samples from 2018 World Cup hosts Russia for re-testing.

A British media report claimed FIFA is investigating if Russia’s 2014 World Cup squad were involved in, or benefited from, an elaborate state-sponsored doping scheme, but no players from the finals three years ago in Brazil returned a positive test.

McLaren’s report, published last year, said more than 1,000 Russian athletes in Olympic and Paralympic sport were part of the institutional conspiracy to conceal positive doping tests.

Published in Dawn, July 25th, 2017