FC BARCELONA has denied allegations made by a Spanish radio station linking the club to “doping practices”.

The radio station, Cadena COPE, claimed on Sunday that Real Madrid had asked Spanish football authorities to take drug testing in the league “more seriously.”

Madrid’s call supposedly claimed the league’s drug testing protocol was a “joke”, and were sceptical that “doctors with questionable reputations” were allowed to operate at the Catalan club.

Spain’s sports minister, however, Madrid had not approached the league with any such requests regarding drug testing. The club declined to comment on the radio report.

Barcelona issued a statement demanding “immediate rectification” from COPE.

FC Barcelona wishes to publicly express its total indignation at these unfounded references which link the Club to doping practices and to condemn such attitudes… its legal department is studying possible legal action to defend the club’s honour, alongside that of its coaching staff, players and medical staff and is prepared to take such action to its final consequences.

Cadena COPE subsequently issued an apology saying it had not meant to call the “honesty” of the Barcelona players into question. It also asked “forgiveness” from Barcelona and Valencia, which had also been implicated in the doping allegations. However, the station stopped short of a full retraction of its report.

Barcelona and Spain defender Gerard Pique was quick to reject the accusations:

Whoever says we’re using banned substances is playing with fire. We have nothing to hide. I’m inside the locker room and I know what we take.

At the centre of the allegations is Eufemiano Fuentes, a Spanish doctor previously linked to blood doping scandals in cycling and athletics. In separate cases during 2008 and 2009, courts in Madrid and Barcelona previously found French newspaper Le Monde guilty of defamation for linking both clubs to Fuentes.

- Additional reporting by AP