Great Britain 2012 Team = England?

August 8th, 2008 | by: Daryl | Comments Off

Seems the English FA are the only home nation keen on fielding a Great Britain team at the 2012 Olympics. FA boss man Brian Barwick had this to say recently:

“Do I think we should have a team representing football in the 2012 Olympics? Yes.”

Can’t be clearer than that, eh? According to the Beeb, he also said that the potentially complicated composition of Team GB “is for a later debate.” Which is a chief execs way of saying “I have no bloody idea.”

For the uninitiated, the reason Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland aren’t keen to be involved in a GB team isn’t anything to do with devolution or nationalism, it’s more to do with the protecting their status as individual FAs, which they feel would be threatened by the existence of a Great Britain team.

My feeling is that that’s a little bit paranoid, especially as FIFA has guaranteed that a one-off Olympic team wouldn’t undermine the individual Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish or English FAs.

But if that’s how they feel, then what can we do? Here are two possible solutions.

1. We just enter a GB team, but fill it with English players. Will be a bit weird maybe, but at least it would be a team.
2. Tournament! We have a four way tourney between England, Scotland, Wales and N.I., similar to the Home Nations Championship, and the winner gets to go forward and represent Great Britain at the 2012 Olympics.

I’d love to see number two happen, if only because the pre-tournament would be a) brilliant to watch and b) a nicely competitive pre-Olympics warm-up for whichever team wins. But number one looks a lot more likely at this point.