Olmps

Why Watch Olympic Football?

Should the world’s game be at the world’s Games?

Many think not..As with tennis, even the victors would acknowledge that the Olympic tournament is not the pinnacle of the sport.. This is less true, however, of the women’s competition than the men’s, as the former is open to footballers of any age..The men’s competition is something of a hotchpotch, being essentially an under-23 tournament. .To make matters worse, as Olympics years coincide with the European Football Championships, the top European countries either do not take part or tend to field weakened teams..And the host nation – Great Britain – doesn’t have a team.. Or at least it didn’t until the English FA decided that it would invent one, in the face of strident opposition from the Scots,Welsh and Northern Irish..

The arrangements for the men’s competition do have their merits, though.. FIFA, the sport’s governing body, organises global tournaments at under-20 and under-17 levels, but there is no under-23 equivalent, making the Olympics the closest thing to a World Cup for this age group..And for non-European nations, at least, the men’s competition at the Olympics is a showcase for the best rising talent in the sport, seasoned with the experience provided by a smattering of older players..The Beijing tourna- ment featured the likes of Lionel Messi and Ronaldinho.. So while Brits may remain underwhelmed, or indeed unrepresented, for South American,Asian and African nations Olympic football is a very big deal indeed..

The Story of Football

The earliest recorded football-like game, played in

China in the fifth century bc, involved kicking a ball through a hole in a piece of cloth suspended from two poles..As there were no teams, it was essentially a form of target practice..The ancient Greeks introduced passing and tackling in a game called phaininda, which was adopted by the Romans and renamed harpastum, but

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the sport probably had more in common with handball or rugby than with football.. Feet don’t appear to have played a particularly active part in the various forms of ‘football’ played in Europe during the Middle Ages either, except as weapons..Typically played on Shrove Tuesday, these games were semi-formalised brawls in which two teams of indeterminate size vied to convey an inflated pig’s bladder to one end or other of a village or town..The one medieval game that did concentrate on footwork was kemari, a ritualised form of keepy-uppy practised in Japan, which was itself derived from the Chinese game of cuju..

Football as we know it evolved in the public schools of England during the nineteenth century, and in 1848 a common set of rules was drawn up..The key subsequent development was the restriction of the right to handle the ball to one player per team during the 1860s. . By the beginning of the modern Olympic era, football had become a significant force – and a working-class passion – in Britain’s industrial cities, with the first

founded in 1888..The sport soon took root in South America and continental Europe, courtesy of expat Brits and anglophile locals.. And – for men’s football, at least – the rest is history..

The story of women’s football is rather less well known..At the start, it developed very much in parallel with the men’s game.. The earliest recorded match was a 7-1 victory for a North of England eleven over the South in 1885..The first organised women’s tournament was launched in the north-east of the country in 1917.. Popularly known as the Munitionettes’ Cup, it was contested by workers in the region’s armaments factories..The era’s celebrated team was Dick Kerr’s Ladies, formed in a Preston munitions factory..The team toured the USA and drew a crowd of 53,000 at a Boxing Day fixture at Goodison Park in Liverpool in 1920..

In 1921,the English FA made a less than enlightened decision to ban women’s teams from playing at its affiliated stadiums, arguing that ‘the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged’..This led to the formation of the breakaway English Ladies Football Association and the establishment of a Challenge Cup..Although the tournament attracted much attention in its early days, women’s football – lacking support from the powerful FA – gradually sank from prominence in the nation of its birth.. Only when the governing body rescinded its ban in 1971 did its fortunes begin to revive..

By this stage, nations in which the women’s game did not face the same kind of institutional resistance had surged ahead, notably Germany, China, the USA and Scandinavia..The first UEFA women’s Championship was won by Sweden in 1982 and eight years later the USA captured the inaugural FIFA women’s World Cup..

Game On: Football Basics

Unless you are a Martian or truly can’t stand the

sport (in which case you are unlikely to want to read a long exposition of its laws), you’ll be fully aware that the object of the exercise is to get the ball into the opponents’ net more often than they get it into yours..You’ll also have an inkling that the players, bar the goalkeeper, are not allowed to use their hands or arms..The one rule that can give trouble is offside .... .

the Offside laws

A player is in an offside position if they are in the

opponents’ half of the pitch, in front of the ball, and closer to the other team’s goal line than the second-to-last opponent..This applies to any part of the player’s body except the arms..

Crucially, however, a player will only be penalised if: they were in an offside position at the moment the ball was last touched by another player; they didn’t receive the ball directly from a throw in, goal kick or corner; or they are deemed to be actively involved

in play..

Decisions relating to offside are frequently controversial for two reasons.. First, it can be extremely difficult to judge whether a player is ahead of the second to last opponent at the moment the ball is played, particularly if the referee’s assistant responsible for making the call isn’t precisely parallel to the player at the time.. Secondly, determining whether a player is active is far from straightforward and often more a matter of judgement than of incontrovertible fact..

which dominates the middle third of the pitch usually goes on to win the game.. Possession isn’t everything in football – what you do when you have the ball is what matters – but the ability to retain it is the hallmark of a good team.. Chasing the ball is dispiriting and tiring; controlling it makes a team master of its own destiny..

Watching the Watchers

Ask yourself whether it’s really reasonable for the

individuals responsible for making the decisions about key incidents to be the only people on the planet without recourse to replays..The issue of whether and how much the officials should have access to technology burns continually..

Watching the Women

Seasoned fans might want to take a break from the

men’s game until the final stages and concentrate on the female tournament instead..The action is slower and less athletic but the levels of skill can be high..

Team GB?

The British invented football, are obsessed with it and happen to be hosting the 2012 Olympics.Yet getting a team together to compete at the London Games has been an uphill struggle.No Great Britain team

has appeared at the Olympics since 1960 and none has even tried to qualify since the English Football Association abolished the distinction between amateur and professional players in 1974.

The root of the problem is a mismatch in the status accorded to constituent parts of the United Kingdom by the International Olympic Committee and FIFA, the governing body of world football.The IOC deems England, Scotland,Wales and Northern Ireland to comprise one nation,known as Great Britain,whereas FIFA,respecting the fact that the Home Nations have fielded separate teams since the sport’s infancy, considers them to be four different countries.Technically,both are right,which clarifies the issue not at all.

This confusion is enhanced by a lack of enthusiasm by the natives for a British team – at least until 2012.To most Scotland or Wales fans the

idea is anathema; the Northern Irish are divided; and the English, well the jury remains out ... though a lot of fans do fantasise about how tasty English-based sides augmented with the likes of Best, Dalglish and

Giggs would have been.

If the fans aren’t keen, the men who run the football associations of Scotland,Wales and Northern Ireland are considerably less so. In a nutshell, they fear that allowing their players to participate in a Great Britain Olympic side would be the thin end of a wedge that will ultimately lead to the loss of their individual identities on the international stage. FIFA President Sepp Blatter has frequently stated that their concerns are groundless, but he is not the world’s most consistent man. In March 2008, in fact, he strongly implied the opposite.‘If you start to put together a combined team for the Olympics,’ he said,‘the question will automatically come up that there are four different associations so how can they play in one team? If this is the case then why the hell do they have four associations and four votes and their own vice-presidency?’

It seems certain that some sort of Great Britain team will be cobbled together for the London Games, possibly under the stewardship of the thunder-thighed former England left-back Stuart Pearce.David Beckham, as ever, is gagging to take part. And there might even be a Welshman,

Gareth Bale having expressed interest.

Football Goes to the Olympics

After featuring as an exhibition sport at the two previous

Games, football made its full Olympic debut at London 1908.. Only six teams took part, including two from France, and the quality was decidedly uneven..The Danes, who lost the final 2-0 to Great Britain, scored 26 goals in their other two Games, including a 17-1 drubbing of France B, in which Sophus Nielsen hit the net ten times..The number of participating nations rose to eleven in 1912, but in many respects the tournament mirrored its predecessor.. Once again there was a handful of big scores, another player (Gottfried Fuchs of Germany) bagged ten goals in a single match, and Great Britain again beat Denmark by a two-goal margin in the final..

The Belgium and Czechoslovakia final at Antwerp 1920

was the highlight of the Games for the locals, so when some youths dug a tunnel under the perimeter fence several thousand of them squeezed in for free..Their presence put such a strain on the already full 40,000-capacity stadium that a detachment of troops was stationed around the touchline to prevent the crowd spilling on to the pitch..The Czechs saw the soldiers’ presence as deliberate intimidation, and were already disgruntled by the appointment of an English referee, John Lewis, whose decisionmaking had so outraged home fans during a qualifying match in Prague that they had physically attacked him.. Czech morale did not improve when the Belgians quickly went two goals ahead.. When Mr Lewis sent off their star player Karel Steiner in the 39th minute, the Czechoslovakian team stormed off the pitch and was disqualified..

The next two Olympic golds went to Uruguay, inculcating the South Americans with a winning habit that they maintained at the first World Cup in 1930..The arrival of the World Cup, combined with America’s lack of enthusiasm for soccer, led to the sport’s being dropped for the Los Angeles Games in 1932, but it was back with a bang at Berlin. .Anyone who thinks bad behaviour in football is a modern disease should reflect on that 1936 tournament.. During the opening encounter between Italy and the USA, the Italian players prevented the German referee from sending off Achille Piccini by pinning his arms to his sides and clamping his mouth shut.. Piccini stayed on the pitch and the Italians won 1-0, and went on to take gold..

The Swedes won in 1948 with a side that boasted three firemen, but it was to be 36 years before another non-communist nation captured gold..The rise of professionalism in Western Europe and South America deprived countries from those parts of their best players, allowing state-sponsored teams of ‘amateurs’ from Eastern Europe to clean up..The Italians did their best to buck the trend in 1964, picking a team that included three members of the Inter Milan team that had recently collected the European Cup..When it was pointed out that not all of their players were strictly amateur, they withdrew from the competition in a huff..

Women footballers finally joined the Olympic party in 1996 at Atlanta, where the host nation collected gold, defeating China 2-1 in the final..This was a mixed blessing for American goalkeeper Briana Scurry, who had unwisely pledged to a journalist from Sports Illustrated that she would run naked through the streets of Athens, Georgia, if the USA won the competition.. Sure enough, in the wee hours of the night following the final, Scurry ran ten metres along a deserted side-street wearing nothing but her gold medal..

The 2000 women’s final was won by Norway, who beat the USA courtesy of a ‘golden goal’ in extra time. .The American women maintained their 100 per cent record of final appearances in Athens and Beijing, overcoming Brazil on both occasions..The second victory proved that there was life after the great Mia Hamm, who retired after the 2004 Games having scored more international goals (158) than any player of either sex, despite having been born with a club foot..