#2 Rio Ferdinand – 8 months
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While Ferdinand didn’t test positive for any substance like Maradona did, he suffered an incredibly long ban for simply missing a drug test entirely. The Manchester United defender was supposed to take a routine drug test in September 2003, but left United’s training ground before the testers could administer it, supposedly to go on a shopping trip.
Although he contacted the club immediately and offered to take the test – and indeed, provided a clean urine sample just two days later – the FA still threw the book at him.
To make things worse for Ferdinand, the ban was only confirmed in January 2004 after an investigation into the incident. That meant that not only would he miss the Premier League run-in with Man United, but he’d also be ruled out of England’s Euro 2004 campaign. An appeal in March 2004 was unsuccessful and meant that the Englishman was indeed ruled out until September.
His United and England teammate Gary Neville was particularly incensed by this and launched an attack on the FA in the media and really, he probably had a point – while skipping a drug test is always controversial, the fact that Ferdinand passed a test a couple of days later suggests he could never have been using performance enhancers anyway – the drugs usually stay in an athlete’s system for a substantial amount of time.
Realistically Ferdinand’s only crime was one of absent-mindedness.
