POSTED: February 9th 2011
NewsUpdate
Olympic warning shot for London 2012 from Europe's leading clubs
KEIR RADNEDGE in Geneva / Sports Features Communications
GENEVA, Feb 08: Yet another headache is looming ahead of the Olympic Games football tournament at London 2012. Organisers from the IOC, world federation FIFA and hosts LOCOG risk facing similar bad-tempered confusion over player availability to the strife which blighted the run-up to the 2008 Games in Beijing.
Already the 2012 competition has been blighted by the refusal of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to make any players available for the first Great Britain team to appear in the Olympic football finals since Rome in 1960.
The 200-strong European Club Association also has its concerns about the proximity of the Games to the start of the many members’ championships within a matter of weeks.
The ECA believes that the international calendar should be redesigned so that only one major national team tournament takes place each year. Olympic football does not feature in the international calendar and clubs are not obliged to release players for a tournament involving squads of under-23s with up to three over-age players.
The prestige of going for gold prompted a string of club v country rows on the eve of the Beijing Games in 2008 involving star players such as Argentina’s Leo Messi and Brazil’s Ronaldinho. Now the clubs have warned that they will not tolerate any players involved in the Euro 2012 finals in Poland and Ukraine – albeit only a handful - being pressed into service a few weeks later in London.
'Not appropriate'
ECA vice-president Umberto Gandini of AC Milan said: “We do not think it is appropriate that some European players should have to play in the European Championship and be involved in the Olympics a few weeks later. It does not make sense for a club player to be involved in two major tournaments in such a short period of time.
“We have appealed to UEFA to say that if a player is selected for Euro 2012, he should not be selected for the Olympics. The Olympics are not part of the international calendar so we hope we can discuss this without getting into conflict as we did in 2008.”
Gandini was supported by David Gill, chief executive of Manchester United which will host some of the Olympic matches. Gill, an ECA board member, said: “A player who is in the squad for Euro 2012 should not then be in the Olympic squad.
“Football is a key part of the Olympics and we are very happy to participate as a league and release players, and we support it - but I hope common sense will prevail.”
Keywords · London 2012 · Olympic football · ECA · clubs · Gandini · UEFA · Gill · Messi · Euro 2012
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