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(Reuters) – Liverpool manager Juergen Klopp said the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) apology to Crystal Palace’s Mamadou Sakho for banning drugs in 2016 was long overdue, but he was glad the defender French would have finally cleared his name.
The Crystal Palace central defender, who was a Liverpool player at the time, was investigated by UEFA and was given a 30-day provisional suspension in April 2016 after testing positive for the fat burner Higenamine.
Sakho missed that year’s Europa League final against Sevilla and Euro 2016 as a result, but UEFA dismissed the doping case against him in July and later confirmed that higenamine was not on the list of banned substances of the AMA at that time.
A lawyer for the AMA apologized to Sakho at a public hearing in London on Wednesday and agreed to pay damages to the 30-year-old man.
“My initial thought was ‘finally!'” Klopp said. “We knew for a long time that Mom did nothing wrong. It was a massive hit. I’m very happy that at least now I have the evidence that she did nothing wrong.”
“Doping is a problem, yes. But I never really saw it as a problem in football because I’ve been in it for 30 years and I have never been in contact with any kind of problem.”
“And if there is, it’s because someone made a foolish decision, not because they wanted to improve their recovery time or whatever.
“If you carry the mark that you did doping, especially when you didn’t, that’s huge. So I’m very happy that he got rid of all these things.”
Sakho did not play for Liverpool again after failing a drug test, moving to Crystal Palace first on loan and then on a permanent contract.
(Reporting by Arvind Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
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