Flamengo suspend Guerrero

RIO DE JANEIRO: Rio de Janeiro football giants Flamengo on Friday suspended the contract of Peru captain Paolo Guerrero following a doping scandal that has ruled him out of the World Cup.

“We confirm the athlete is suspended,” a spokesman for the club told AFP.

Guerrero’s future will be determined by the club once it has studied legal arguments made by the Lausanne-based Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which earlier this week extended Guerrero’s ban from six to 14 months, the spokesman said.

The Peru captain is Flamengo’s star but at 34 and with his contract due to run out in August, there are expectations his time at the club is all but over.

Guerrero, capped 86 times by his country, was hoping to play in the World Cup for the first time. Peru had not qualified since 1982 — two years before he was born.

He had been included in the extended 25-man World Cup squad on Sunday as his initial six-month ban had expired a week earlier.

But after both the World Anti-Doping Agency and Guerrero himself appealed to CAS — the former seeking a longer ban, the latter hoping for total exoneration — the sports tribunal opted to increase his suspension.