It's not exactly a crazy point that I'm making. Europe has all these great teams, yet Belarus and Switzerland made up two-thirds of the teams that qualified from that region.
It's like you say, unappealing teams, but their on merit. But then I guess a soccer fan does like to see a mix of teams once in a while rather than the usual teams taking part. Olympics is good for the developing nations to get a shot on the world stage which they might possibly build on for future world cups, of which we wouldn't start calling them unappealing if thy were world cup regulars.
I think the crowds - especially for the group stage - will be crap for a couple of reasons. Firstly, there's a ton of football to see in the UK for nine months a year; why are you going to shell out ££ to see a half-assed Olympic tournament? Secondly, with all the bad feeling in Wales and Scotland about a "GB" team, I'm doubtful residents of Cardiff and Glasgow will be rushing to support the tournament.
To be honest, football is not really an olympic sport and it shouldn't really be at the olympics. In all other sports competing at the olympics (apart from tennis) winning the olympic gold is the ultimate prize you can achieve, in football nobody dreams of going to the olympics and winning gold. A footballers dream is to win league title, Champions League and if into international football world cup, european championship, copa america, african cup of nations etc.. I don't think tickets football (especially womans football) will sell that well for this tournament.
Going by your reasoning then they should also eliminate basketball, baseball, boxing, and a few other sports. []__[]
A Gold medal in basketball is the ultimate int'l prize. Baseball has been voted out of the Olympics. I'm not sure about boxing because they seem to have about 426 world champions at any given time. For ice hockey it is the ultimate int'l prize. So yeah, it's basically just tennis and men's soccer.
Representing your country is the ultimate prize in any sport no matter what. Players competing in the olympics want to win the gold medal for their country but in their baskeball career the ultimate prize is an NBA championship. []__[]
I hope Coventry hosts some good matches. Tickets are about £70 (approx. $110), and the road to the Ricoh Arena has been dug up for some reason. We'll probably get Iraq vs. Botswana over here. No-one will go as it is very expensive for a youth game.
No idea where you are getting your info from. Tickets at Coventry are £20 - £40, and you usually get to see two games for that price. http://www.tickets.london2012.com/b...Date=&toDate=&morning=1&afternoon=1&evening=1
But not really a lot when half the worlds population comes from there. And if you did take their allocation away then how on earth would Asian nations develop? They wouldn't. So, should we start taking allocation off them in World Cup's aswell? Let's face it. World Cup's are fair for the Europeans in allocation and Olympics are fair for Asians and others whom are still developing. But seems you'd rather have nations that have developed on each and every occasion so your killing the world game and the Olympics and keeping out the 3rd world.
Also, when tickets were for sale, of the few "sessions" that were sold out at least one was at Coventry.
Well I personally would have given the .5 to North America, as the USA and Mexico are probably the favs every time to get the two spots granted 2008 Honduras won.
In reality, football takes the biggest portion of the revenue in the Olympic Games. That's why IOC can't remove football from the Olympics. Don't forget that football is the most popular sport in the world.
Participants. Host: Great Britain UEFA: Spain, Switzerland, Belarus CONMEBOL: Brazil, Uruguay CAF: Gabon, Morocco, Egypt AFC: South Korea, Japan, United Arab Emirates CONCACAF: ?? OFC: ?? CAF/AFC play-off: Senegal vs Oman/Uzbekistan/Syria
Doesn't sound like he's suggesting that at all. Why to you automatically link AFC with the 3rd world? The 3 teams that qualified from that region are all rich, developed nations.
So the nations that have qualified are developed - but i'm not talking about being rich, i'm talking football. The UAE wouldn't have stood a chance with his formula. Most Asian nations in footballing terms are 3rd world, for the worlds biggets continent the only time they get to shine is at the Olympics and he would like to take their allocation away, god help us to see them at a world cup!