Sport's mad excuses as Argentina star blames failed drugs test on son's medicine
Less than a year after winning the World Cup with Argentina, Papu Gomez's career may be all but over - and he allegedly has his son's cough medicine to blame.
Argentina star Gomez was part of his country's squad in Qatar, starting the matches against Saudi Arabia and Australia. However, it has since emerged that he failed a doping test while on club duty in November 2022, shortly before the World Cup began.
Gomez turns 36 in February, and the two-year ban - if upheld - could pose questions over his longer-term career. The veteran has put out a statement on the matter, though, giving his reasons for the positive test.
"The presumed violation originates from the presence of Terbutaline in my system, which I accidentally ingested with a spoonful of cough syrup for my son, to alleviate his cough," Gomez said. "It is important to specify that Terbutaline is allowed for professional athletes and in no way does it improve performance in football.
"Without getting into the situation, I have asked my lawyers to look into the suggestion the disciplinary case was not treated according to the norms," he added, with the statement posted on his Instagram account. The former Atalanta star, now at Monza, also described himself as a "strong defender of clean sport and sporting behaviour".
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Gomez is far from the first sporting figure to provide a bizarre excuse, be it for a failed test, an individual error or a wider issue. Here, Mirror Football looks at a few other examples.
Kolo Toure
What is the best excuse you've heard from an athlete? Have your say in the comments section
Kolo Toure was at Manchester City at the time of the ban (PAUL ELLIS/AFP via Getty Images)Former Arsenal and Manchester City star Toure missed several months of action in 2011 after testing positive for a banned substance. However, according to Arsene Wenger - the Ivorian's manager in North London - diet pills were to blame.
"He wants to control his weight because that's where he has some problems and he took the product of his wife," Wenger said. "Never trust your wife! That is how he was caught.
"He is a boy who has a clean life," the Frenchman added. "He's very honest living, always at home, a family man and I don't suspect him at all to have taken drugs to enhance his performances. I just think it is a mistake by forgetting to ask, 'Can I take that?'"
Alex Ferguson
It's not just drug tests which bring gymnastics out of those in the sporting world. Sometimes it's defeats against Southampton.
United trailed 3-0 at The Dell at half-time in an April 1996 meeting. After the break, Alex Ferguson's team reemerged in blue and white shirts - rather than the grey ones in which they began the game - with Ferguson addressing the change directly after full-time.
Manchester United ditched their grey shirts against Southampton (Getty Images)"The players couldn’t pick each other out," he said. "They said it was difficult to see their team-mates at distance when they lifted their heads.
"It was nothing to do with superstition. This club went 26 years without winning the league and we didn't think about changing the red shirts. It's nothing to do with that at all."
United did bring the score back from 3-0 to 3-1 after the switch. Vindication?
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Jurgen Klopp
Liverpool have largely got the better of Everton in Merseyside derbies during the Jurgen Klopp era. A goalless draw in 2019 was a rare exception, though, and manager Klopp believed he'd got to the bottom of it all.
Jurgen Klopp was left frustrated after a 2019 Merseyside Derby (Getty Images)“ Very, very difficult game for different reasons against a wild opponent," Klopp told Sky Sports after the stalemate. "I know people don’t like it when I say this – the wind came from all different directions, you saw that in a lot of situations.
"It didn’t help any football play, especially when the ball was in the air, which it was a lot. In a game that was difficult to control because of those things, we had I think three or four really big chances.”
Liverpool ended up missing out on the title by a single point at the end of the season. The next year, though, the wind began to blow their way as they ended a long title drought.
David James
Liverpool beat Newcastle in 1997 despite David James' woes (Mirrorpix)If you were around in the 90s then you'll know how easy it was to spend hours playing Tekken 3. You probably weren't Liverpool's first choice goalkeeper at the time, though.
"I was getting carried away playing Tekken II and Tomb Raider for hours on end," David James, who was Liverpool's number one, said in 1997. The comments came after a 4-3 victory over Newcastle in which his shaky keeping very nearly saw his team throw away two points.
It wasn't the first time a PlayStation was blamed by an England international. Years later, defender Rio Ferdinand blamed a long gaming session after suffering a knee tendon injury - supposedly caused by resting his knees on a table.
Vladislav Vashchuk
There have been plenty of examples of fire alarms and similar disturbances interrupting players' sleep before a big game. Frogs, though? That's rarer.
"Because of the frogs' croaking we hardly got a wink of sleep," Ukraine defender Vladislav Vashchuk said after his side lost 4-0 to Spain at the 2006 World Cup. It didn't stop Ukraine recovering to reach the quarter-finals, though, and it also prompted a delightful response from a spokeswoman for the hotel in which they were staying.
"Obviously there are frogs in the lake," she said. "There are also birds. In the morning they wake up and start going cheep. It's logical. Are you suggesting that we should go and catch all the birds?"
Ryan Lochte
It's not just footballers who are prone to creative excuses. Back in 2016, American swimmer Ryan Lochte delivered a tall tale after an act of vandalism during the Rio Olympics.
Ryan Lochte at a press conference (Getty Images)“They pulled out their guns, told the other swimmers to get down on the ground — they got down on the ground. I refused, I was like we didn’t do anything wrong," Lochte's first version of events went." The Olympian and his team-mates had allegedly been held at gunpoint by individuals posing as police, but CCTV later painted a different picture.
He would later dial back on his comments, saying in a statement: “I want to apologise for my behaviour last weekend – for not being more candid in how I described the events and for my role in taking the focus away from the many athletes fulfilling their dreams in the Olympics. It’s traumatic to be out late with your friends in a foreign country – with a language barrier – and have a stranger point a gun at you and demand money to let you leave."
Lochte was charged with falsely reporting a crime, but these charges were later dismissed. More importantly, perhaps, it gave us the headline 'The Lochte Mess Monster'.
Richard Gasquet
Richard Gasquet has continued playing well into his thirties (REX/Shutterstock)Finally, over to tennis. Richard Gasquet is a three-time Grand Slam semi-finalist, who has previously held a top-10 ranking, but he attracted controversy in 2009 after cocaine was found in his system.
The Frenchman claimed the cocaine entered his system after he kissed a woman at a nightclub when in Miami for a music festival. Unlike some other excuses, though, this seems to have been good enough for the authorities, who allowed Gasquet to return to competitive sport after the "very small" amount of the banned substance was detected.
"This explanation is more likely than not to be the correct one", a tribunal found. The tribunal also stated it "found the player to be a truthful and honest witness, and a man of integrity".
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