It is fair to say that Mykhailo Mudryk isn’t exactly a player who will go down in history as one of the best players ever to pull on the famous Blue of Chelsea, but even his biggest detractors will likely have been saddened to hear about the winger being charged with doping by the English Football Association. There may also have been some sense of surprise for many, given the fact that the Ukrainian certainly hadn’t played his games as if he had been taking performance-enhancing drugs. It is also surprising when you bear in mind the fact that he is an Orthodox Christian.
What Happened
On the 17th of December 2024, news emerged that the Football Association had issued Mykhailo Mudryk with a provisional suspension from the sport on account of a positive drugs test. On the fifth of May 2025, Chelsea gave his shirt number to Cole Palmer, meaning that he was without a designated squad number for the Blues. Less than a fortnight later and the FA charged him with violating anti-doping rules, meaning that he could face a ban from playing for as long as four years. He had been in Wroclaw in Poland the month before to see his club win the Conference League.
🚨 Official: Mykhailo Mudryk charged by The FA for anti-doping violations and could face up to a four-year ban.
“We can confirm that Mykhailo Mudryk has been charged with Anti-Doping Rule Violations alleging the presence and/or use of a prohibited substance, in terms of… pic.twitter.com/UGi8nrPHea
— Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) June 18, 2025
The substance that Mudryk was accused of taking was Meldonium, which has been a banned substance in the eyes of the World Anti-Doping Agency since 2016. The substance was developed in Latvia in the 1970s and used by countries in Eastern Europe as a treatment for cardiac heart conditions. In the United Kingdom, it cannot be proscribed or even purchased, whilst its use is not in and of itself illegal. It was the substance that tennis player Maria Sharapova was found to have in her system that led to her being issued with a 15-month ban in the March of 2016.
The Player Denied Taking It
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Mudryk himself denied taking the substance, saying that the finding had come as a ‘complete shock’ to him when he learned about the positive result. He claimed that he had ‘never knowingly used any banned substances or broken any rules’, which is the sort of thing that athletes always say when they have been found to have taken a substance that WADA has declared to be illegal. It was then claimed by a Ukrainian journalist that the winger had been given a stem cell injection whilst on international duty that might have caused the failed doping test.
Having not played for Chelsea after the November of 2024, appearing in a 2-0 win over Heidenheim in the UEFA Conference League, the player went on to reportedly pass a lie detector test whilst maintaining his innocence in the matter. Given the seriousness of the charges against him, there were relatively few updates from any of the parties involved in the matter in the weeks and months after the accusation was first made public. The football club did ban him from their training base in Cobham, however, after reportedly providing him with a programme to maintain his fitness.
Chelsea Moved On
A big part of the problem for Mudryk is that Chelsea were quick to move on from the winger in the wake of his provisional suspension by the Football Association. In the summer of 2025, for example, the Blues signed Alejandro Garnacho from Manchester United and Jamie Gittens from Borussia Dortmund, both of whom play in Mudryk’s preferred position of left-wing. Whether the suggestion that the stem cell injection was from a cow that had been exposed to meldonium was true or not, the signings meant that there wasn’t even really a place for Mudryk to return to in the Chelsea squad.
Under the ownership of Clearlake Capital and Todd Boehly, the Stamford Bridge club has engaged in a process of continually signing players and moving others on, seemingly intent on opting for a process of incremental upgrades at every given opportunity. It is more than possible, therefore, that Mudryk might have been replaced and sold even if he hadn’t found himself at the centre of the doping accusations. Certainly, the fact that he was handed a ban by the FA won’t have discouraged Chelsea from signing his replacements, irrespective of whether or not that was their long-term plan.
Worst Case Scenario
The four-year ban scenario that Mudryk faced was a worst-case one, with the options open to the Football Association ranging from a one-month ban to a ban of two years. The FA would take mitigating factors into account when deciding upon the best response to Mudryk’s positive test, including the possibility that the player’s stem cell injection whilst away with his national team was the reason for the meldonium appearing in his system. Chelsea had announced that the player ‘has confirmed categorically that he has never knowingly used any banned substances’, which the FA would also take into account.
The player would be able to appeal any ban if issued with one, initially appealing to the Football Association before possibly turning to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. It was CAS that reduced Paul Pogba’s suspension for doping from four years to 18 months, which is why it is something that Mudryk could consider if handed the longest possible suspension from the sport. Chelsea, meanwhile, would be able to terminate the player’s contract if it was thought that he was guilty of gross misconduct. That would obviously be another terrible moment for the player, who signed an eight-and-a-half-year contract in 2023.