Ah, football. The beautiful game. The most popular sport on the planet. Who doesn’t love it?
Well – a potentially controversial opinion is about to follow – it’s difficult to like as an Olympic sport.
There, I said it.
The Olympic Games is all about the weird and wonderful sports you don’t see every day. I’m talking about your skeet shooting, modern pentathlon, bowls, archery, taekwondo. The niche sports. Quite frankly, we watch enough football throughout the year that one more tournament seems like overkill.
- The latest Men’s Olympics Football odds can be found on paddypower.com
But did you know that football is one of the oldest sports on the Olympic programme, having been included at every Games bar 1896 and 1932.
Despite being one of the most successful nations in the history of the Summer Olympics, Team GB rarely compete in the Men’s Football tournament.
In fact, they have fielded a squad in the event just once in the last 64 years – and that came at their home Games when London was on staging duties in 2012!
Are they doing it to take a stand against the fact that Football is hardly an Olympic sport? No…
It’s because forming a team requires the Football Associations of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to come to an agreement.
The one time in recent memory they did – that aforementioned 2012 team – was hardly a success as the likes of Ryan Giggs, Aaron Ramsey, Micah Richards and Daniel Sturridge could only reach the quarter-finals when they were dumped out of the tournament by the mighty South Korea on penalties.
Team GB have also taken part in just two Women’s Football tournaments at the Olympics since it was first included at Atlanta 1996.
They are not competing in Paris because England failed to qualify via the Nations League.
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