Drug Use by West German Soccer Team Charged

The West German sports community was rocked Monday 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.

Schumacher is regarded as one of the most valuable players on the West German team that finished second in the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, losing to Argentina in the final.

The 32-year-old superstar says 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.”

When he was a young player, Schumacher says, he regularly drove several experienced members of the team to a physician in Cologne to get pills or injections expected to improve their performance. He says the doctor supplied pills containing anabolic steroids, amphetamines and other stimulants.

Several members of the national team have taken illegal stimulants, Schumacher says, including a famous member of the Munich team who was known as “the walking pharmacy.”

In the book, Schumacher also recommends that prostitutes be procured for players in the World Cup finals, suggesting that it would be good for morale.