Team GB Olympic Football
The Build Up To the London 2012 Olympics
By Mark A Todd
After a lot of discussions and debates as to whether Great Britain and Northern Ireland should have a representative in the London Olympics 2012, The GB team organisers have decided to enter a soccer team into the Olympic event. With reluctance and we'll explain later on in the article as to why, the 4 home nations football associations (England, Scotland, Wales,and Northern Ireland) have agreed to release their players to play in this year's Olympic football tournament.
The team manager will be the former Nottingham Forest and England Footballer for both club and country Stuart Pearce, an excellent international left back winning home and European trophies at club level unfortunately less so at international level, reaching semi final stages but no further. He is famous for not converting a penalty in the penalty shoot out competition in the World Cup 1990 Semi-Final England v Germany.
He is totally not to blame for the knock out of the England team they should have scored and won the game in normal time. He later went on to score in a penalty shoot out in Euro 96' against Spain, now that takes a lot of bottle! I only wish that I had had the guts and the chance to represent my country and play professional football (a little bit of frustration coming out here but never mind). After his playing career ended he went into club management managing football clubs like Nottingham Forest(caretaker), Manchester City there he was given little time to show what he could do.
At the moment he is managing a successful England Under 21 side as well as being an assistant coach to Fabio Capello to the main England football Squad. He has been given this difficult opportunity to run the team GB football team, difficult as to in picking a squad of players from all four home nation countries and making them gel as a team in such a short time period with hardly any time for training sessions leading up to the tournament.
The main reason for the reluctance of the home nation FA's to back the inclusion of a Team GB football team for the London 2012 Olympics is that they feel that it may undermine their own football associations in terms of world football. FIFA has always discussed why Great Britain has the ability to enter 4 countries into tournament events.
This has always been the case since the international associations being created. The English, Scottish Welsh and Northern Ireland associations have fought hard to remain independent from each other and quite right too in my opinion. But just think of what the strength of past squads could have been if they entered official tournaments as one team.
The likes of players such as George Best, Bobby Charlton, Bobby Moore and Denis Law all in the same international team I'm sure they would have done very well if not world World Cups and European Championships. Players such as Kenny Dalglish, Graeme Souness, Kevin keegan, Mark Lawrenson, Alan Hansen, John Toshack, Ian Rush, Mark Hughes wow I could go on and on for ages (oops! showing my age here) better stop. Anyway you get my point, there are pros and cons for the idea.
The Olympic football event makes countries pick players who are under 23 years of age, with each squad being allowed three over aged players the names being suggested for the over aged players are; Ryan Giggs(Wales), Joe Cole(England), and the famous David Beckham(England) the final decision will be made by Stuart Pearce.
Get more information on the Team GB Football shirt that is available for the Great Britain Olympic Football supporters by clicking on the links. Great Britain Olympic Football Shirt Lets all get behind Stuart Pearce and the TeamGB Soccer Team to drive for Olympic Gold!
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