Mudryk can play again today, and a footnote in the WADA rules is why
The Court of Arbitration for Sport partly upheld Mykhailo Mudryk's appeal, and the Chelsea winger is free to return immediately after more than eighteen months out.
Mykhailo Mudryk is free to play again with immediate effect. The Court of Arbitration for Sport partly upheld the Chelsea winger’s appeal against a four-year doping ban and set the sanction at time already served, which means it is over.
The 25-year-old Ukraine international has not played a competitive match since November 2024. He was provisionally suspended by the Football Association the following month after a sample returned an adverse finding for meldonium.
Why was Mudryk’s ban lifted?
Not because he proved his innocence. Mudryk accepted that he had broken anti-doping rules and agreed a suspension equal to the time he had already sat out. What changed was the scaffolding around the case: the World Anti-Doping Agency has since revised the technical document setting reporting limits, and under the current thresholds the meldonium concentration in his sample would not have been reported at all. Collected today, that sample produces no case.
It is one of those rulings that hands everybody a point. There was a violation, there was a punishment, and there was a line in a technical document that moved eighteen months too late for him.
What happens to him now?
Chelsea say they want him back to full fitness, back into the squad and back on the pitch, in that order, and he joins the pre-season tour. Patience will be required: twenty months out of competition do not vanish in a fortnight of training, and he returns to a squad that has turned over considerably since he last played in it.
If you follow the European season starting up — and over here the Primeira Liga already has its opening weekend set — the number worth watching is how many minutes he actually gets in August. Full reasoning for decisions is published on the Court of Arbitration for Sport site.
By Vasco Almada
Image: Fanny Schertzer / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)
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