Ajax’s Cameroonian international goalkeeper Andre Onana has been suspended for one year for doping, the Dutch club said on Friday.
The club said in a statement Onana had “mistakenly” taken his wife’s medicine which had led to the banned diuretic Furosemide appearing in his urine.
Onana posted on social media said that “everything was the result of a human mistake.”
“I mistook a medicine containing a substance banned by WADA for a simple aspirin,” he wrote on Twitter and Instagram.
He said he considered the punishment “excessive and disproportionate as it has been acknowledged by UEFA that it was an unintentional mistake.”
Onana and Ajax both said they would appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
Ajax said they had hoped Onana would receive a shorter ban because the substance was “arguably” not a performance booster.
“On the morning of October 30, Onana was feeling unwell,” the club said in a statement.
“He wanted to take a pill to ease the discomfort. Unknowingly, however, he took Lasimac, a drug that his wife had previously been prescribed.