Hamburg SV defender Mario Vuskovic has had his doping ban extended by two years by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
The 22-year-old will now be suspended from football until November 2026.
Vuskovic tested positive for banned substance erythropoietin (EPO) in September 2022 and was provisionally suspended in November. In March 2023 he was handed a two-year ban by the German Football Association (DFB), backdated from the initial suspension, becoming the first professional footballer to be found guilty of EPO usage.
He appealed the decision and sought a complete annulment to the suspension. Vuskovic had maintained his innocence throughout the process, insisting that the result was a false positive.
His appeal was heard by CAS in May, alongside appeals from the National AntiDoping Agency of Germany (NADA Germany) and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), who had both sought to increase the sanction to a four-year ban.
The CAS panel determined Vuskovic had committed an anti-doping rule violation and a four-year ban was deemed appropriate in line with FIFA’s anti-doping regulations as Vuskovic did not submit any mitigating factors for the positive test.
The CAS judgement read: “For various reasons, not least because Mario Vuskovic himself did not submit any mitigating factors that could be taken into account to reduce the four-year period of ineligibility, the Panel found that there was no reason to deviate from the application of the FIFA ADR (anti-doping regulations) and imposed a four-year period of ineligibility on the player.”
A Hamburg statement read: “Vuskovic and his lawyers are now examining the extensive written judgment. The players and the club ask for understanding that this will take some time. HSV and Vuskovic will enter into an internal discourse, evaluate the new situation and then discuss further action.”
The centre-back was deemed to have committed a violation of article 6 in FIFA’s anti-doping regulations: the “presence of a prohibited substance or its metabolites or markers in a player’s sample”.
Article 20 suggests a four-year period of ineligibility in situations where “the anti-doping rule violation does not involve a specified substance, unless the player or other person can establish that the anti-doping rule violation was not intentional, or the anti-doping rule violation involves a specified substance and FIFA can establish that the anti-doping rule violation was intentional”.
EPO is a performance-enhancing drug more commonly associated with cycling and other endurance sports. It stimulates red blood cell production and increases oxygen carrying capacity.
The charges against Vuskovic related to a urine sample given after a training session on September 16, 2022. Both his A and B sample subsequently tested positive for EPO and the player has been suspended since that finding was made public, last playing for HSV in a loss to Greuther Furth in November 2022.
During the initial DFB Sports Court trial, Vuskovic’s lawyers attacked the collection methods, but also WADA’s testing procedure for EPO, which they claimed is outdated, unreliable and inconclusive.
The former Croatia youth international joined Hamburg from Hajduk Split in 2021 and had been an important part of the first-team squad before his ban, featuring 16 times in 2.Bundesliga during the 2022-23 season. His Hamburg contract expires in 2025.
Vuskovic’s Hamburg teammates appeared supportive following his initial suspension, holding up his shirt during a goal celebration against Nurnberg.
The Athletic has contacted the DFB for comment.
(Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images)
