Two Sporting Cristal players face a potential sanction after they failed to report to a doping control station following the football club’s 1-0 loss to Real Garcilaso on 13 June, after becoming lost in the stadium. Mauricio Viana and Renzo Garcés failed to locate the doping control station (DCS) within the Estadio Garcilaso (pictured) stadium in Cusco, which Sporting Cristal blamed on its opponent.

‘We regret that it has not complied with the regulations which require a properly-identified member of the anti-doping team to accompany players to sample control in the DCS’, read a statement. ‘There was no timely information about the location of the DCS, with the aggravating circumstance that it was not placed in a location that was easily accessible from the playing field, as dictated by Article 7.1 of the Doping Control Regulations for the Decentralised Championship 2017’.

In the statement, Sporting Cristal claim that neither its team doctor not manager were informed about the location of the DCS. The club also claims it visited the referee dressing room to ask where the DCS was, but nobody appeared to know.

Sporting Cristal said that it was eventually ‘informed that the DCS was located on the outside of the East Tribune, an area that besides being removed, contravened the provision that the DCS must be located in an area to “allow the transfer of players whithout danger of aggression by others”’. It said it has filed a complaint with the Justice Commission of the Peruvian Football Federation (FPF).

* UPDATE: The two footballers concerned were reportedly sanctioned with four-game suspensions by the Peruvian football federation (FPF).