Friday, February 18, 2011

If you all hate Colin Moynihan, Sepp Blatter, Lord Coe...clap your hands

A recurring topic which simply won't do the honourable thing and disappear:
THE Scottish Football Association hopes that any Scot selected for Team GB at the London Olympics in 2012 will declare himself unavailable for the sake of the country.

But the governing body knows it will essentially be powerless to prevent anyone participating in the event should they be inclined to accept the invitation.

There are 525 days until London 2012 kicks off. Make that 523 if you are talking about the Olympic football competition, which will begin with a women’s match at Hampden Park two days before the opening ceremony itself. Yet still the issue of British involvement in the football event remains chaotic.

This is the basic story to date.

That (appointment of Stuart Pearce as manager), coupled with the freeing up of some fixture dates, heavily suggests that Team GB 2012 will bear an uncanny resemblance to the England Under-21 side. Such an outcome might not exactly please the crowds at the Millennium Stadium or Hampden Park, but it would at least allow administrators to breathe a sigh of relief.
As the article points out, the two stumbling points to that are the Poison Dwarf, Moynihan and intriguingly enough the European Club Association who seem now to be intent on flexing their muscles:
Another factor to be taken into account is that the European Club Association, the powerful forum of Europe’s top clubs, recently stated their view that no player who has participated in the Euro 2012 finals in June should be called upon for another major tournament in such short order afterwards. This could rule out the top tranche of English players and make the credentials of someone like Tottenham Hotspur’s Gareth Bale, who will turn 23 just a week before the tournament, even more alluring.
And cause all kinds of "constitutional" hassle, all for a tournament that ranks very lowly in the hierarchy of "must wins".

And remember me mentioning the possibility of the Home Nationals being revived?
Sir Bobby Charlton spoke recently of how Lord Coe had personally asked him on behalf of LOCOG, the London Olympic Games organising committee, to try to build bridges between the home nations. A return of the Home International Championship has been floated as a bargaining chip.

Ah, right. And here's me thinking it was simply an idea that had come in a flash of inspiration to mark the FA's "150th anniversary".

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland ... co-authored a letter in May 2009 saying they would not participate in either the men’s or women’s teams, but would not prevent England from fielding both teams under the British banner."

The Herald article has conflated two events. It was in March 2009 that the three co-authored a letter to FIFA saying the Olympic football competition was pretty crap all round and they wanted no part of it. FIFA then requested a joint response from all four British Associations, which was submitted to FIFA in May 2009 and duly endorsed.

In order for Stuart Pearce to select the likes of Gareth Bale the FA will have to renege on that agreement. There was plenty of English finger wagging at the perfidy of the FIFA executive committee but is Perfidious Albion going to do the same?

Anonymous said...

Correction - January 2009 rather than March 2009