Brazil’s Olympic soccer champion Gabriel Barbosa has been banned for two years for a doping offense. The country’s anti-doping court punished on Monday (local time) an alleged attempt to cheat by the striker during a training control on April 8, 2023 at his club Flamengo Rio de Janeiro. By a vote of 5:4, the judges found the 27-year-old guilty of delaying his doping test through unruly behavior.
Barbosa, who celebrated the Olympic victory in Rio de Janeiro together with star Neymar in 2016, protested his innocence and announced that he would go to the International Court of Arbitration for Sports in Cas. “Despite my respect for the court, I reiterate that I have never attempted to obstruct or cheat an examination and I trust that the higher court will exonerate me,” Barbosa wrote on Instagram.
Anno Hecker Published/Updated: Recommendations: 3
Barbosa’s club Flamengo noted the court decision “with surprise,” the club wrote on its homepage. Barbosa will be supported in calling Cas. The club assumes “that there was no fraud, not even an attempt, that would justify the penalty imposed.”
The 18-time national player with the nickname Gabigol moved to Europe after winning the Olympics, but was unable to assert himself at either Inter Milan or Benfica Lisbon. He has been playing for Flamengo since 2019, initially on loan and since 2020 with a contract up to and including December 31, 2024. With the team from Rio he won, among other things, the Brazilian championship in 2019 and 2020 as well as the Copa Libertadores in 2019 and 2022.