LONDON: Football should learn from the cycling scandal and out more efforts into testing for blood-doping EPO, according to John Fahey, president of the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Fahey said in London: “Football is not testing enough for EPO. They can do more and we are encouraging them to do more.”

Leaders of WADA and world football federation FIFA are due to meet on Thursday and that concern will be high on the agenda after Spain’s anti-doping agency launched an inquiry into claims by a former president of Real Sociedad that the San Sebastian club’s players had used performance-enhancing substances.

WADA’s director-general David Howman also cast a sceptical claim on football’s profession of perpetual action to keep doping at bay.

Howman said: “If you asked whether every team in the Premier League had been tested four times in a year I think you know what the answer would be. Team sports players can go their entire career without being tested. There’s a programme that should be taken up by all team sports.”

Fahey questioned football’s slow take-up of the concept and practice of biological passports which have proved a significant weapon in fighting doping abuse in athletics and other sports.

He also urged football to “use intelligence” after highlighting its importance in the USADA’s eventual success in revealing Lance Armstrong as a dope cheat.

Such preventative measures helped the policing agencies keep up the pursuit of the dope cheat scientists.

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