Soccer line sport > Blog > Sport > Star soccer player Samir Nasri facing four-year ban after bizarre scandal – USA TODAY

Star soccer player Samir Nasri facing four-year ban after bizarre scandal – USA TODAY

A celebrity health and wellness clinic in downtown Los Angeles has become the center point for one of the European soccer season’s most bizarre scandals.

Samir Nasri, a star forward with Spanish club Sevilla and the French national team, presumably had little idea of the mayhem that would follow when he began an appointment in late December with Drip Doctors, a boutique “therapy and lifestyle medspa” popular with L.A.’s rich and famous.

Little more than a week on, Nasri has become embroiled in a salacious sex scandal that has been splashed across the European tabloids, claims to have had his Twitter account apparently hacked, and, to top it all off, could even face a four-year ban from soccer for a potential doping violation related to the treatment.

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Nasri, who earns more than $7 million per season and previously played for Arsenal and Manchester City in the English Premier League, used the traditional mid-season winter break in Spain to enjoy a brief visit to California.

On Dec. 27, Drip Doctors founder and CEO Jamila Sozahdah administered an IV drip in Nasri’s hotel suite, accompanied, as she would later tell British newspaper The Sun, by a receptionist. Soon after, the official Twitter account for Drip Doctors, which has previously been frequented by entertainment stars such as DJ Steve Aoki and rapper Chris Brown, posted a photo of Sozahdah with Nasri.

“We provided (Nasri) a concierge Immunity IV Drip to keep him hydrated and in top health during his busy soccer season,” the post read.

And then….things started to take a quirky twist. A series of Tweets began to appear from Nasri’s own account claiming that Sozahdah had provided him with sexual services during and after the appointment. As quickly as the Tweets were deleted, more reappeared, with many of Nasri’s followers suspecting they were actually written by Nasri’s on-off girlfriend, British model/singer Anara Atanes. Nasri claimed his account had been hacked but has not offered further comment.

“This week, Ms. Sozahdah was dragged into an unfortunate incident involving libelous accusations sent on the hacked social media account of Samir Nasri, after administering a standard treatment on the soccer star,” a statement from Drip Doctors read. “Ms. Sozahdah would like to address head on this unfortunate incident of cyber-bullying: all Drip Doctors services are professional health services, administered by a professional team, and all insinuations otherwise are nothing more than libelous attacks.”

Atanes hit the headlines two years ago after launching into a vitriolic online attack on France head coach Didier Deschamps, after Deschamps left Nasri out of the national team squad for the 2014 World Cup.

Sozahdah claimed that although she agreed to meet Nasri at an L.A. nightclub hours after their appointment, it was purely on a platonic basis. She told The Sun that an angry Atanes had confronted her and Nasri at the club.

“I don’t know why (Atanes) got the wrong impression,” Sozahdah told the newspaper. “ I was completely professional. I think she should control her behavior.”

The wild and wacky world of international soccer occasionally throws up such salacious incidents, but things were not over yet for Nasri. Even though there were no banned substances in Nasri’s drip, the item is advertised as containing “one liter” of hydration. However, World Anti-Doping Agency rules prohibit intravenous drips in excess of 50 ml over a six-hour period, unless an exemption certificate has been awarded on medical grounds.

“A violation…of the code could result in a sanction of up to four years,” a WADA spokesman told the Daily Mail. “However, this will depend upon factors such as whether or not the use was intentional and if unintentional, the sanction could be subject to further reductions on the basis of no significant fault or negligence.”

Nasri is now back in Spain and returned to action with Sevilla this week, being allowed to play while the potential infraction is investigated. After the turmoil of his trip to L.A., the soccer field must seem like the calmest place he can find right now.