Chelsea’s Mykhailo Mudryk appealing against four-year FA ban for doping

Chelsea winger Mykhailo Mudryk is appealing against a four-year ban from football for breaching the FA’s anti-doping rules.

Sources with knowledge of Mudryk’s case, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to do so publicly, confirmed that the 25-year-old had been hit with the maximum ban of four years for doping by English football’s governing body.

Mudryk has not played professional football since November 2024, shortly before he was contacted by the FA regarding an adverse finding in a routine urine test. He was subsequently charged with a breach of the governing body’s anti-doping rules in June 2025.

Mudryk maintains his innocence and has been training alone at the home of non-league club Uxbridge FC in order to stay in shape while he waits to find out when he can resume his career.

He is now challenging the sanction at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

A statement from CAS issued to The Athletic said: “CAS confirms it has received an appeal by Mykhailo Mudryk against the FA, filed on 25 February 2026. The parties are currently exchanging written submissions, and a hearing is yet to be scheduled.”

The Athletic has approached the FA for comment.

The Athletic has been told by multiple sources, who wish to remain anonymous as they are not authorised to speak publicly on the matter, that Mudryk tested positive for meldonium following international duty with Ukraine in November, 2024.

Meldonium is an anti-ischemia medication, which, according to USADA (the United States Anti-Doping Agency), is typically used clinically to treat “those suffering from heart conditions, such as low blood flow to the heart and angina”. For athletes, it can assist with endurance and the capacity to recover from exercise.

It is not approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States and is only prescribed in parts of eastern Europe. It was added to the World Anti-Doping Authority’s (WADA) banned list in January 2016 and is prohibited at all times, both in and out of competition.

The English Football Association’s (FA’s) anti-doping regulations state that any breaches will be dealt with as strict liability violations. This means that a player will be found guilty of a violation if a prohibited substance is found in that player’s body. It is not necessary to demonstrate intent, the regulations say. A player’s alleged lack of intent or knowledge is also not considered a valid defence to a charge.

A violation of the FA’s anti-doping regulations carries with it a maximum penalty of a four-year suspension, although mitigating factors can reduce that from anywhere from two years to a month.

Historical precedent indicates that any sanction would include the 16 months Mudryk has already spent on the sidelines. If he is exonerated, he would theoretically be free to return to playing immediately.

Mudryk, a £62million ($83.6m) signing from Shakhtar Donetsk in January 2023, is under contract with Chelsea until June 2030 with a club option to extend for a further year.

Who will decide the CAS verdict and have footballers been successful in the past?

The appeals arbitration process at CAS begins with an exchange of written submissions. Once that stage is complete, the parties will agree on whether to nominate a sole arbitrator or a panel of arbitrators to weigh the evidence presented.

In the case of a panel, each party can nominate an arbitrator from the CAS arbitrator list, while the president of the panel is selected independently.

After written proceedings, a hearing may be scheduled to consider arguments, oral testimonies and expert evidence. Then the arbitrator or panel of arbitrators will deliberate and pronounce a final decision.

CAS has created a specialised anti-doping division to hear and decide anti-doping cases in accordance with the World Anti-Doping Code.

The most famous example of a successful appeal to CAS regarding a doping violation in football is Paul Pogba, whose initial four-year ban was reduced to 18 months in October 2024 after a CAS panel accepted the France international’s argument that he had unintentionally ingested a banned substance.

What did Mudryk do?

In December 2024, it emerged that a routine drug test found Mudryk to have — in Chelsea’s words — “an adverse finding” in a urine sample provided by the player. This immediately led to a provisional suspension from Chelsea’s first team as they awaited the results of further testing.

When urine samples are collected, they are put into two separate containers. The A sample is used for the initial test, and if that comes back positive, they then test the B sample to verify the accuracy of the first result.

So, following Mudryk’s positive A sample, his B sample was then tested, which verified that he had tested positive for meldonium, a banned substance.

Chelsea subsequently issued a statement saying that Mudryk “has confirmed categorically that he has never knowingly used any banned substances”. In the same statement, the player said: “This has come as a complete shock as I have never knowingly used any banned substances or broken any rules, and I am working closely with my team to investigate how this could have happened.”

What is meldonium and which sportspeople have been found to have taken it?

A prohibited substance, in short.

Meldonium is a heart disease drug developed in 1970 in the former Soviet Union. It is designed to combat ischemia, a condition where blood flow is restricted to body tissue, muscles or organs.

It boosts metabolism and increases blood flow and, by extension, the exercise capacity of athletes. It was added to the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) list of banned substances in January 2016 after its previous inclusion in the agency’s monitoring programme the year before.

Former Russian tennis player Maria Sharapova had been the most high-profile case of an athlete being banned for using meldonium. A failed drugs test at the 2016 Australian Open led to a two-year ban issued by the International Tennis Federation, with Sharapova accepting she had made “a huge mistake” in taking the substance.

Sharapova told a news conference in Los Angeles she had been given a medicine for 10 years by her family doctor and had been unaware that it had also been known as meldonium, which had been added to WADA’s prohibited list in the weeks before her failed test.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) reduced Sharapova’s ban to 15 months in October 2016 after finding that she did not deliberately cheat and that there was no “significant fault or negligence on her part”.

The use of meldonium was not uncommon among Eastern European athletes before its ban, but it was the subject of a doping scandal in 2016 when the Ice Hockey Federation of Russia replaced its under-18s squad with an under-17s team at the World Under-18s Championships due to several players returning positive test results.