Going for Gold (and Blue Shorts)

by Carlos

This summer we’ll be blessed with not one, but two international football tournaments. I can barely contain my excitement. After witnessing England being bravely knocked out in the quarter-finals of Euro 2012, we’ll get to cheer on Team Engl…sorry…Team GB in the Olympic football tournament. Are we as a nation, or as we are in football, four separate nations, going to be able to get behind the GB team?

One issue is that we still do not know what the make-up of the team is going to be. Will there be any Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish players in the squad? Or is it going to be the more likely scenario of the England U21 team, plus David Beckham? We know the individual FA’s, with the exception of England’s, are vehemently opposed to a GB team, for reasons that have already been well debated. However, they have said that they’re powerless to prevent any of their players wanting to be part of the GB team.

The man in charge of this rabble, Stuart Pearce, has a supposed list of 80 players with which to cobble together a team of under-23s, and the allowed trio of players over that age. It’s quite a long list when you consider that the final squad can only contain 18 players. Psycho is obviously expecting a few knock-backs. Those are likely to come from some of the other home nations’ players that he wants such as Gareth Bale, Craig Bellamy, Chris Brunt, Steve Fletcher, to name a few. Their respective clubs aren’t going to want them in a tournament that runs dangerously close to the start of the new season. The players themselves, whilst expressing interest in representing GB, on second thoughts may not want to jeopardise their international careers with their countries, however unlikely that may sound. Any player selected for England’s Euro 2012 squad will not be considered for GB, so unfortunately we won’t get to see Emile Heskey terrifying the opposition at the Olympics.

David Beckham is a cert to be in the squad as I imagine the sponsors would demand it. There’s no questioning of Beckham’s marketing powers, and his ability to kick a stationary ball quite well, will undoubtedly sell many more razors or shampoo for some of the Olympics‘ official partners.

Joe Cole is also reportedly on this fabled list after his mini-revival on loan at Lille. It’s highly unlikely he’ll make the England Euros squad, so he could bring some much needed tournament experience to the GB squad. Criminally underused and misused by England, like it seems done to all the most talented players (Gerrard, Scholes “stick ’em on the left!”), this could be a nice international swan song for little Joe.

But this is all by-the-by. I can’t help but think that there’s no real point in all this fuss about a GB team as there‘s little chance of a medal. This is due to the small matter of Brazil and Uruguay, the latter of which, GB have been paired with in the group stages, along with Senegal and UAE. They have both been through serious qualifying in the form of the South American Youth Championships in Peru last year, whilst the Great Britain team will have played a grand total of zero games. South Americans take the Olympics very, very seriously indeed and in Uruguay’s case, to the extent that it’s almost on the same pedestal as the World Cup. Uruguay won two gold medals in Olympic football in the 1920s, just before they won the inaugural World Cup. They finished second to Brazil in Olympic qualifying at the expense of a much fancied Argentina team. Along with its youngsters, the Uruguay squad is likely to include Luis Suarez, and perhaps even Edinson Cavani and Diego Forlan, so they’ll be fancying another medal this time around.

And then there’s Brazil. An Olympic winners’ medal is the only thing that’s missing from Brazil’s rather bulky haul of trophies. Brazil host the World Cup in 2014 meaning they do not have to qualify, so they’ll be using the Olympic tournament to blood their team in a competitive environment. They’ll be going all-out to win gold with a very strong squad of players. In Neymar, they have one of the hottest properties in world football and he scored 9 goals in Olympic qualifying. Add the likes of Ganso, Lucas and Casimiro, as well as, some older heads in the likely form of Inter keeper Julio Cesar and Milan’s Thiago Silva, it makes a formidable squad and makes them firm favourites.

So is a rag-tag GB team led by Beckham and Pearce going to be any match for the South Americans? And I haven’t even mentioned Spain…

http://v2journal.com/going-for-gold-and-blue-shorts.html