Peru’s Guerrero barred from FIFA World Cup
Lausanne, May 15 (IANS) The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has extended the doping sanction against Peru national football team captain Paolo Guerrero to 14 months total, which means the veteran striker will miss the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
Guerrero, 34, was originally suspended for a year after a routine doping test in October 2017 detected a cocaine metabolite. But world football’s governing body FIFA subsequently reduced the penalty to six months and the player returned to action May 6 with Brazilian club Flamengo, reports Efe.
The Peruvian appeared before the Lausanne, Switzerland-based CAS earlier this month to argue that the suspension was unjustified, maintaining that the cocaine metabolite entered his system via tea made in a pot that previously contained coca leaf.
At the same time, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) asked CAS to increase the length of Guerrero’s suspension to two years.
Monday’s CAS ruling will keep Guerrero off the field until January 2019.
While the judges accepted that Guerrero “did not attempt to enhance his performance by ingesting the prohibited substance”, the CAS said in its decision, “the Panel considered that the Player did bear some fault or negligence, even if it was not significant, and that he could have taken some measures to prevent him from committing the (doping violations)”.
The ruling comes a day after Peru, whose last World Cup appearance was in 1982, included Guerrero on the 25-man roster submitted to FIFA ahead of next month’s tournament in Russia.
