Does soccer have a drug problem? I think not. But, like most other activities in this 21st century, it has the potential for a drug problem.

Make that two drug problems. There are the lifestyle drugs – marijuana and cocaine for example – and there are the performance-enhancing drugs such as steroids and EPO.

The World Anti-Doping Agency, devoted to the idea of keeping sports “clean,” bans both classes of drug. I say “clean” rather than clean, because any discussion of drug-taking in sports needs to start with the realization that an enormous amount of drug-taking and drug-administering goes on under the general headings of physical preparation and medical treatment.

Those are the good drugs. But the bad drugs lurk and testing to discover them is now widespread in soccer.

On the recreational-drug front, the latest culprit to be exposed is Adrian Mutu, a 25-year-old Romanian striker under contract to the English club Chelsea. Mutu, reportedly earning $5 million a year, cost Chelsea $27 million when they bought him last year from the Italian club Parma. He came with a reputation as a fine goal-scorer, and a flamboyant playboy.

At first, the goal scoring held sway, with four goals in his first three games for Chelsea. Then the lifestyle took over and the goals dried up: Mutu netted only two more goals in the next 22 league games. This season saw the arrival of a new coach at Chelsea – the Portuguese Jose Mourinho, who was not prepared to indulge Mutu’s antics. Mutu was told to cut out the partying. But Chelsea was evidently suspicious; in October the club had him target-tested for drugs, and Mutu came up positive for cocaine.

Without further ado, Chelsea simply sacked him. His future looks bleak. Out of work, he now faces a lengthy ban from the game. Under WADA regulations the minimum ban should be for two years, but FIFA has yet to accept the WADA code in full. In particular, FIFA has maintained that each case should be treated on its merits, and that an automatic two-year ban is a violation of human rights.

There is also a possibility that Mutu may be on the receiving end of a precedent-setting lawsuit. By sacking him, Chelsea seemed to be writing off the possibility of getting as much as $17 million in transfer fees by selling him to another club. But according to the London Telegraph, Chelsea may move to sue Mutu for the lost transfer money.

Big questions surround the apparent vindictiveness of Chelsea’s attitude. Gordon Taylor, who runs the players’ union in England, has accused the club of using the positive test as an excuse to get rid of a player the new coach didn’t want: “We feel there is a hidden agenda. He’s there, a new manager comes in, things haven’t worked out and they wanted him out.”

Chelsea has stridently denied the accusation, claiming that it tried to help Mutu with his drug problem, but that he snubbed their efforts.

Soccer’s most sensational drug case involved the Argentine superstar Diego Maradona, another cocaine user. In 1991 he tested positive when playing for the Italian club Napoli. After a 15-month ban, Maradona returned to the game and was a member of Argentina’s 1994 World Cup team. It was a disaster: After only two games, Maradona tested positive, only the third player to do so since FIFA began World Cup testing in 1966.

This time cocaine was not the problem. Maradona had taken what was described as “a cocktail” of ephedrine-related stimulants. He was thrown out of the World Cup and his subsequent life has been the saddest of stories, with prolonged rehabilitation treatment in Cuba punctuated by sudden returns to Buenos Aires.

On one such trip earlier this year, the alarmingly overweight Maradona was rushed to the hospital, critically ill with what was said to be a lung infection. But his personal doctor, Alfredo Cahe, emphasized the importance of curing Maradona’s cocaine addiction: “I get the impression that this is the last chance we have.”

The Maradona case highlights the fear that the use of recreational drugs is likely to lead to performance-enhancing drugs. As always, reliable statistics on the use of such drugs are not available. But all the major soccer countries now operate drug-testing programs, and the low level of positive results is surely a reliable indicator that the use of performance-enhancers is not widespread.

This makes a fair amount of sense. The bulking-up provided by anabolic steroids, far from being helpful in soccer, may well work against efficiency in a sport where suppleness and quickness are more important than size. Similarly, the extra stamina provided by EPO seems almost irrelevant in a sport where the ability of a player to pace his game, to know when to exert himself and when to relax, has always been the hallmark of a good player. And the use of amphetamine-type stimulants seems to have gone out of fashion.

Even so, soccer cannot afford to be complacent because changes taking place within the sport may radically alter the picture. To begin with, there are too many games. The modern pro player is likely to play over 60 games a year, often involving a great deal of international travel. Exhaustion is a growing problem and it would not be at all surprising if players were to turn to drugs to boost flagging performance.

FIFA President Sepp Blatter has repeatedly drawn attention to the problem. He wants countries to lighten their schedules by reducing the number of teams in their domestic leagues.

This is not a suggestion that goes down well with the clubs, who do not want to see their money-making opportunities reduced. They respond by pointing out that Blatter’s FIFA, by introducing a new tournament – the Confederations Cup – is doing nothing to reduce the number of games.

Soccer displays another, more insidious trend. Proof is hard to come by, but it is the feeling of many observers that players are getting bigger, that bulk and strength are becoming more important as the game gets more physical. If that proves to be the truth, can anabolic steroids be far behind?