The West German sports community was rocked...

The West German sports community was rocked by charges that members of the national soccer team have used drugs. Harald (Toni) Schumacher, a goalkeeper with the Cologne team and captain of the national team, makes the charge in his book “Starting Whistle,” extracts of which appeared in the magazine Der Spiegel.

There has been a “tradition of doping” among West German players, Schumacher says.

The 32-year-old athlete said he tried pep pills in 1984, to see if he could achieve “100% performance,” but that he stopped taking them because he feared long-term effects.

Schumacher says that in the fall of 1984, before an important game, several players from Cologne took cough medicine that contained ephedrine, a stimulant.

“The dosed-up colleagues tore around the playing field like devils,” he says. “We won--but in what a state! After days of painful exhaustion we decided, never again.”