Going for Gold (and Blue Shorts)

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.

Continued in the Olympic section - https://www.606v2.com/t28309-going-for-gold-and-blue-shorts

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