If I look out of the window while writing this I can see that it is raining again, I've got the USPGA golf on the television as well and it's raining there too. This coming after watching the Olympics in China this weekend, where the rain was also coming down in torrents. It's lucky that it is still the summer and we have global warming and the greenhouse effect to even things up. One thing for the life of me that I really can't get interested in viewing from the Olympics though is the football. We already have the World Cup and the various continent championships around the world in their various formats and I'm afraid I just can't be bothered with another one. Especially when, like EURO 2008, there is no England team to support. The player rules are a little bit bizarre as well, with FIFA recently insisting that the release of players under the age of 23 for the Men's Olympic Football Tournament is mandatory for all clubs. But then you are allowed to have three players in your national squad over the age of 23, but the release of them from their clubs is not mandatory, which is what I find somewhat strange. I don't understand the point of having one set as mandatory and another set not, and then I really don't get the reasoning behind allowing three overage players. To me, you either make it under-23's only, amateurs only, or allow a complete free for all where anybody can play. Having it as it is now just makes it much more confusing from a spectator perspective as well as an administrative one to me. Three European clubs however won an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport to keep their players out of the tournament. Those being Argentine forward, and Barcelona star, Lionel Messi, Werder Bremen's Diego and Rafinha of Schalke, who both represent Brazil. Despite that though all three clubs have bowed to FIFA's insistence that the players be released and they will play anyway. The seeming reason for that bowing to jolly old Sepp Blatter being the reaching of an agreement between the clubs and the Brazilian football federation to ensure that their players were adequately insured against injury at the Olympics. Which brings back memories of Newcastle chairman Freddy Shepherd threatening to sue the FA over Michael Owen's £150,000 medical bills from the 2006 World Cup following his knee injury. Somewhat unsurprisingly with the way of football these days it looks like it was that Brazilian insurance money, and money, hmm, money, lots of money, smell that lovely money, give me more money, that caused the problem in the first place. The reason being that Barcelona and FC Schalke have Champions League qualifiers during the Olympics and they could lose out on big fat wodges of dosh if they fail to reach the group stage. I've managed to avoid that age old chestnut of a British football at the team at the Olympics so far, but, while talking about the Champions League it seemed a good time to mention it. Why you ask?, well Arsenal and Liverpool are our prospective group stage qualifiers this year so we wouldn't have faced losing any British players anyway, although France and Spain aren't in the Olympics football either. With London 2012 only four years away though pressure will be inevitably increase to have a unified Great Britain football side competing at the Olympics for the first time since 1960, even if they did take part in the qualifying tournaments up until the early 1970s. Britain actually having won football gold three times in 1900, 1908 and 1912 in Paris, London itself and Stockholm respectively. Certainly the most intriguing of those three successes came in 1900 at the Vélodrome de Vincennes in Paris. The competition was only actually a demonstration sport in that Olympics with only three countries taking part, those being Belgium, France and Great Britain. The countries actually being represented by the now defunct Upton Park FC, a USFSA XI from France and Brussels University in Belgium. To make matters even more interesting, only two matches actually took place with Upton Park defeating USFSA 4-0, while USFSA then went on to beat the Université de Bruxelles 6-2. Britain being deemed winners as they were the only side to have a 100% winning record. No gold medal was awarded though because, as previously mentioned, football was a demonstration sport, but the IOC have since awarded medals to all three countries its attempt to reconcile early Olympic Games with the modern award scheme. |