2012 Olympics--Soccer/Football/Futbol

A lot of folks in the UK don't agree on what it means to be British, but we do know how much the Welsh, Scots, and Northern Irish dislike being called English.

That leads us to today's agreement that will allow the 2012 London Olympics to include a soccer team representing Great Britain. It's an elegant, yet unsatisfying solution: the FA, FAW, SFA, and IFA have agreed that the IOC can call an England team "British." If FIFA agrees, then the first British soccer team in a half-century is good to go.

Is this reasonable? It seems like a bit of a climb-down by three of the home nations.

I think we had this debate here once before but what I still do not understand is why Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are so afraid they are going to lose their football independence if there is a Great Britain Olympic team? This is a one off event. each of those federations have their own leagues, national teams, etc., they would not lose their independence over a joint Olympic team.

If I recall the earlier discussion, the view in Great Britain is that other federations around the world will use this as a way to end the 4 British federations indepednence. But as noted they each have had their own leagues, national teams since the sport became organzied inetrnationally. Hard to see that ending.

I'm a bit late contributing to this one, but it is good that a compromise has been reached. It'll be interesting to see whether we'll be able to field a similarly constituted team in future Olympic tournaments or whether this is just a one-off because these games are in London.

As far as the other 3 British associations are concerned, I can kind of understand their reasoning. For every person within FIFA who says that a British team would not affect the home nations' independence, there will be another who says that it would. Blatter himself has given conflicting statements on this. In the final analysis, the Olympic football tournament is a fairly worthless sideshow and the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish don't think it warrants taking any kind of risk by placing their fate at the hands of FIFA's goodwill.