Bernd Schuster: doping should be used to help players recover from injuries "As long as it's purely for regeneration, I don't have a problem with it," Schuster said in an interview with the Sport Bild magazine on Monday. If a player is fit again after an injury in two or three weeks, then it makes good sense. But not when it is intended to bring a player to 120, 150, 180 per cent. So as long as it is not intended to increase his ­performance but intended to bring him back as quickly as possible to the right standard. They are very delicate, they need to be prepared for anything. And it is often just a state of mind. You could give them glucose and tell them it is good for them and they would take it. But these are extreme examples. Most guys are interested only in proper medicine and not in all these different therapies. The 53-year-old German, who played for Barcelona and Real Madrid in the 1980s, said doping was not an issue when he was a player "because the word, as we know it today, didn't exist. We all took something. No stimulants in the classical sense. He added: "But the doctors and physiotherapists always gave you some kinds of things, sometimes even on the mornings of games, when you didn't feel well somehow or you were in a bit of pain. You didn't ask what you were ­getting. But it wasn't about getting electricity in your backside to run around the pitch at 200 per cent. Schuster said players" recovery times had shortened considerably. Before, if I had a swollen ankle it was kneaded out with a rod. Tears would practically shoot out of every pore in my body," he said. Today, the guys can play again one week after a hamstring [injury]. It's crazy what has changed for the better as a whole.