Russian hackers Fancy Bears dropped a complete non-story this week regarding the use of banned substances in soccer. You see, the typical SHOCKING TRUTHS UNCOVERED AND REVEALED that we’ve come to associate with hacking were nonexistent in this information dump, which is insane given football’s history of being corrupt to the core.
This particular story involved three things we all love (the World Cup, h4ckz0rs and drugs), but no news source could manage to make this story go viral.
That's because, according to reports, the players who hypothetically “failed” tests for banned substances during the 2010 World Cup actually didn’t fail the tests — they’d been given therapeutic use exemptions (TUEs) allowing them to use the banned substances. So something that was allowed to happen, happened.
Wah-wah.
We were still treated to some phenomenal headline writing in an attempt to stir up interest yesterday (“Hackers Name Five Argentines…”, “Russian hackers open medical data on Carlos Tevez, others at World Cup”, “Drugs storm hits football: Russian hackers leave sport’s clean image in tatters”), but this shit really could’ve and should’ve hit harder. Fancy Bears, you better bring it next time.
While referencing Carlos Tevez, Juan Sebastian Veron and Dirk Kuyt was absolutely necessary to get anyone to click on an article, the real finding was that 160 players, including four in the UK, failed the doping tests, with the indication being that these all came outside the top-flight and involved recreational drugs.
In the UK, three tested positive for cocaine and one for ecstasy. Given that cocaine and MDMA only stay in your system for 2-3 days, it can be deduced that really young, really rich people with a lot of time on their hands like to party. Thanks for the pwnage, h4ckz0rs.
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