World football’s governing body, FIFA, could face embarrassment over World Cup hosts Russia after they admitted failure to carry out a single ‘tampering’ test on suspicious Russian drug samples.

FIFA became a key figure in the Russian doping scandal after a revelation from popular media outlet, Daily Mail, revealed that the entire Russian squad from the 2014 World Cup in Brazil and at least 11 others were on a list of reported beneficiaries of Russia’s state doping and cover-ups.

The aforementioned names were given to FIFA about a year ago as part of the over 150 suspicious Russian football cases deemed to be worthy of urgenthe investigation due to the existence of supplementary evidence.

The global body has however confirmed that they have yet to carry out ‘forensic analysis’ of sample bottles due to the fact that, until recently, there had been ‘no standard methodology to determine whether bottles containing urine for doping analysis bear marks indicating surreptitious opening’.

While speaking on the matter, a FIFA spokesman confirmed that testing will start next year. He said: “The World Anti-Doping Agency have informed [us] and other international federations that the forensic analysis of the stored samples by the designated expert team could only start as of mid-January 2018.”

“WADA will decide which federation takes priority.” the spokesman added.