When Arsene Wenger suggested to L’Equipe that Football may not be the doping immune sport we all assume, it was almost as if the Arsenal manager didn’t consider the repercussions his words could have.

Perhaps we can’t blame him; Wenger made similar claims in 2013, protesting that the beautiful game has “become full of legends who are in fact cheats,” but they fell on deaf ears as most focused on the findings of Europol’s match-fixing investigation instead.

The Frenchman probably assumed a similarly apathetic response this time around, despite his words following the revelation that a Dynamo Zagreb player had failed a drugs test after Arsenal’s shock defeat to the Croatian outfit earlier this season.

Wenger regularly and candidly expresses progressive views on most of Football’s most controversial topics and resultantly has a reputation as a bit of a nosey parker. You can certainly imagine certain sectors of the English game rolling their eyes at yet another idealistic rant from Le Professeur, wondering why he’s championing an issue that has been mentioned on single-digit occasions in the Premier League since its 1992 incarnation.

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But much has changed throughout world sport in the two years bridging Wenger’s separate accusations. In February 2013, we were still coming to terms with the magnitude of Lance Armstrong’s stranglehold on Cycling’s drug-fuelled underworld and how he’d used to become one of the greatest American sportsmen of all time. Now, the idea that he conned the globe to lift seven Tour de France titles is so unanimous and incontestable that we have Hollywood films about it.

Likewise, and most significantly of all, Wenger’s latest remarks come in the context of Russia’s alleged state-sponsored doping programme, which could send Athletics spiralling down the same dark path as Cycling should the World Anti-Doping Agency’s report stand up to meticulous scrutiny.

Sport worldwide is infested with cheats and dopers. It always has been. Since 2005, for example, the MLB have handed out 52 bans for doping in Basketball – and that’s not including Minor League Baseball or non-affiliated leagues.

Since 1983, the NFL has issued over 350 suspensions for performance-enhancing and recreational drugs. Athletics meanwhile, has such a long rap sheet of offenders it’s separated into alphabetical letters on Wikipedia. It would be naive the assume Football doesn’t suffer the same problems simply because they aren’t often discussed.

After all, Football is the most lucrative and pressurised sport in the world; its climate encourages a win-at-all-costs attitude and its financial muscle is more than enough to cover up potential scandals in the name of the greater good. According to Wenger, 50% of all psychologically tested sportsmen at the highest level – including footballers – answer ‘yes’ when asked if they would take a product that would guarantee them a gold medal or a world championship, at the consequence of them dying within the next five years.

Many will argue doping isn’t part of the footballing culture, like in Baseball, Cycling or WWE for instance, and is in fact completely adverse to it. There is little use for substances such as Creatine, for example, which simply increases the size of muscles, in a sport where fluid mobility has become increasingly essential.

But that is not necessarily the case. As The Guardian’s Daniel Taylor reports, Arsenal used what most now believe to be amphetamines back in 1925, in the late 1930s, Wolves, Fulham, Preston North End and Tottenham Hotspur were all injecting monkey-gland extracts, and in 1964, Everton goalkeeper Albert Dunlop alleged he and many of his team-mates took ‘Purple Hearts’ – another manifestation of amphetamines.

Even during the Premier League era, Middlesbrough defender Abel Xavier received an 18-month ban in 2005 for taking anabolic steroids, Manchester United’s Rio Ferdinand was handed an eight-month suspension two years prior for missing a drugs test, the circumstances of which remain suspicious, and Manchester City’s Kolo Toure received six months in 2011 for taking a prohibited substance – believed to be his wife’s weight loss pills.

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Of course, those were isolated incidents and in the cases of Toure and Ferdinand, rather ambiguous ones that may have involved no actual or intentional doping. Wenger doesn’t believe doping is a significant problem in England. “In the Premier League, I don’t see any signs of doping at all,” the Frenchman said during a Q&A with beIN Sport.

But nonetheless, the ramifications could be huge. Imagine if Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi, two of the greatest players the beautiful game has ever produced, who boast seven Ballon d’Ors between them, turned out to be a fraud like Lance Armstrong. Suddenly the integrity of the sport is completely ruined; suddenly Barcelona’s incredible dominance during the Pep Guardiola era becomes completely meaningless.

Many will claim it’s improbable, but I’m sure many cycling enthusiasts once said the exact same thing. In fact, Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes, who was arrested in 2010 as part of Operation Greyhound, has testified to treating tennis players, boxers, athletes and footballers as well as cyclists.

That is why Wenger’s latest accusations must be treated with the utmost severity and not be brushed under the rug as a problem football doesn’t need to face. If the plights of Cycling and Athletics have taught us anything, it’s that there is no such thing as being too rigorous, invasive or overbearing when an entire sport’s reputation is at stake. Likewise, the Arsenal gaffer’s suspicions are not solitary.

WADA chairman Dick Pound believes the reports condemning Russia are “probably the tip of the iceberg” and that other sports are riddled with widespread doping as well.

The FA have requested Wenger explain his comments further. But having already admitted that he has no specific details or names to give, you get the feeling English football’s governing body won’t be launching a probe of their own anytime soon. The British culture is one of keeping schtum and the FA have a knack of acting beyond the logic of us mere mortals. Maybe there is no problem after all, especially here in the Premier League. But it always better to expose the truth immediately, than one day suffer the consequences of inadvertently hiding it.

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