The World Anti-Doping Agency has called on football to do more to combat the threat to the sport, questioning whether Premier League players in England are tested enough for EPO and other blood-boosting drugs.
"Football is not testing frequently enough for EPO; they can do more and we are encouraging them to do more," said John Fahey, the president of Wada. EPO, which increases red blood cell counts to boost endurance artificially, was one of the cocktail of drugs used in professional cycling from the early 90s and is at the centre of the ongoing Operación Puerto trial in Spain.
In the wake of the fallout from the investigation that led to Lance Armstrong being stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned for life, the spotlight has fallen on other sports including football and tennis.
David Howman, the director general of Wada, said that after years of trying it was now making significant progress with professional team sports in the US and called on football to follow the example of Major League Baseball.
"We had a meeting last week with Major League Baseball. They now do more testing and are doing more analysis of more substances than many international sports federations. Each baseball player on the roster of a major league team will be tested four times a year," said Howman.
"I know I'm talking quantity, rather than quality, but if you transfer that approach to the Premier League and ask whether every player in the Premier League had been tested four times in a year I think we all know what the answer is. Team sports players can go their entire career without being tested once. That's an initiative by MLB that ought to be taken up by others."
In Spain, where Dr Eufemiano Fuentes is on trial for endangering the health of the athletes involved in a wide-ranging doping ring, Operación Puerto has implicated athletes from sports other than cycling.
On the opening day of the trial, Fuentes said he treated "footballers, tennis players, athletes and a boxer" but the judge has not compelled him to name names despite repeated entreaties from Wada's lawyer.
Howman said it had spent "many euros" getting the trial to this point and again called for the identities of the athletes linked to the "200 plus" blood bags seized from Fuentes to be made public.
Several high-profile tennis players have publicly questioned the frequency with which they are tested and the Arsenal manager, Arsène Wenger, called for more blood testing in football last weekend.
"I would support it. Uefa [is] ready to do it, but it poses some ethical problems because everyone has to accept that [it] will check the blood and not everybody is ready to do that," he said.
Fahey questioned why football was not doing more to test for EPO. "Football is not testing enough for EPO, it can do more and we are encouraging them to do more. And use intelligence, not just more tests," he said.
"I would argue we now know that the athlete's biological passport is a very effective tool. Why isn't football using it?"
Wada has frequently questioned whether all international federations are doing enough to ensure that their testing is sufficiently targeted to catch likely cheats and whether they are collecting enough blood tests alongside urine samples.
In an extensive speech in which he cautioned that the battle against doping was becoming harder and called on governments to pass legislation that made it easier for law enforcement agencies to tackle the problem, Fahey called for more investment and vigour from sport.
"It is not only governments that need to raise their game in terms of anti-doping. Sport too needs to stop procrastinating and make a very real stand against this continuing trend to cheat," said Fahey, who will stand down as president later this year.
"I have no qualms in saying that sport has to take more responsibility for what is going on within its boundaries, and the Armstrong case has shown this with particular clarity," he added.
"Sport needs to recognise that every time there is an inept response from the sports administrators to doping – as we have seen from cycling over the years – the reputation of sport across the world suffers as a result."
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