Football's top-10 drug and match-fixing scandals

10. Stan Lazaridis

While not the most sensational of drug scandals, the 2007 case of the Australian football Hall of Fame inductee and former Australia internationlal led to a change in performance-enhancing drug laws. Then with Perth Glory, poor Lazaridis tested positive to finasteride, a drug present in hair loss medication he was using. While he managed to keep his luscious locks, it was of little comfort for the former Birmingham and West Ham winger, after he was handed a 12-month ban. Finasteride at the time was believed to be used as a masking agent, but the farce surrounding Lazaridis’s ban, along with a similar ban for Brazilian legend Romario, led to the drug being removed from the banned substances list in 2008.

Thursday 14 February 2013 4:31 AM