For where he is in his career, McAtee needs to be playing every week. Pep's good at rotating so he'll get minutes, but he'll probably be somewhere in between where ESR/Nelson were at Arsenal last year and where Jones/Elliott were at Liverpool. Pep just wants him for depth.
It would be the first appearance for a men's side since London 2012. 🇬🇧British Olympic chiefs are hoping to enter a men's football team into the 2028 Games in Los Angeles.Read more ⬇️#BBCOlympics #BBCFootball #LA2028— BBC Sport (@BBCSport) August 12, 2024
It would be nice to see, i'm sure we'd be hit with a lot of drop outs like the other nations are but we have the depth at underage now where we could handle those and still be competitive. I imagine the prospect of a Olympic medal would be enticing to a lot of players. I don't see the FA's coming to agreement over it mind you. Also pretty difficult to qualify for an Olympics in the first place - you need to finish semi-finals to make it.
What's the actual reason for the FAs of the home nations not wanting it? I've read they think it might affect their sovereignty in the eyes of FIFA which I think is a load of nonsense, surely it's something more. I feel like 2012 showed there are plenty of Welsh and Scottish players who'd be more than happy to participate so it feels like it's just the higher ups being bitter. Don't know how the fans feel mind.
They say sovereignty, but it doesn't really make any sense given they managed to agree on it for the womens team, and at any rate there are numerous other countries like France and Denmark in the same boat where their Olympic side could technically be made up of multiple FA's. Even if they were concerned about sovereignty, they could just as easily agree that only the English FA would take part. I suspect the real reason is most likely nationalist politics coming to the fore.
LA 2028 at least has better dates to slightly avoid the season. Football will begin on the 12th July with the final on 28th/29th July. Might see less drop outs than team saw this time.
I think this year would've been the best year to try and take part. There definitely would've been pull-outs, like with every other country, but our U23 talent pool is so deep at the minute and in Carsley (assuming he would've been the manager) we would've had someone extremely competent taking charge of the side. It'll likely be a long while before we get an U21 manager of Carsley's level again and it's tough for any country to maintain a really deep pool of talent.
Even if the sovereignty argument is nonsense there is still a pretty worthy argument to be against it imo. Combining nations that are pretty significant rivals for an U23 tournament does seem a bit odd. I don’t know why the actual nation that qualifies for the Olympics can’t just take on the role of representing GB. After all, they are the ones that would be deserving of it. That would then quash the sovereignty argument.
https://www.oufc.co.uk/news/dane-scarlett-signs-united - Dane Scarlett has joined Oxford United on loan.
Pretty sure at 2012 it was just the Scots that had an issue with it? I think we we're going to have a GB women's Olympic side at Paris 2024 but they failed to qualify.
I don't know why. It would have been the first time a Scottish player had got out the group stage of an international competition. Btw the main thing I remember about 2012 GB side was Stuart Pearce picking Micah Richards instead of David Beckham as one of his overage players.
We pretty likely to do so. There is one spot for Europe and GB would be the front runner to beat Ireland and the Netherlands to it for both the Men and Women. USA, a representative of the Caribbean, Australia, South Africa and India probably the other teams (6 team tournaments).
Forgive my ignorance but what’s the difference between the women being able to compete for a team GB but there’s such a hoo ha fuss about the men having a team? I mean surely the so called political pressure still applies?
Is there even an audience for a GB men's Olympic football team? The hotch-potch team we put out for the London Games had about as much appeal as a Soccer Aid Xl for most serious fans. And come LA we're either going to be footballed out again after another long Euros, or getting ready for the new domestic season. Let's just stay out of it.
It was pretty popular in 2012, but I suspect that was mostly down to it being held here rather than any natural enthusiasm. I doubt matches shown at 2 or 3 in the morning will generate much interest.
The Football at the Olympics just gone was also pretty popular in France and Spain and South American countries have always taken it quite seriously
Our team would likely be devasted with pull outs and absentees due to senior commitments. There would be interest if we entered a team, but I'm honestly not sure there's a massive amount of benefit. The under 21 age category is a good cut off for Youth team football, I'm not sure there's a hell of a lot to learn from an U23 tournament (especially with over age players).
It's really pretty meaningless at the Olympics - like a number of other sports. Unless the Olympics is the pinnacle of international competition with the best in the business taking part, then the resources would be better spent on promoting other sports. Would be ideal to promote something like futsal instead.
It's popular in other countries (although naturally not as popular as the major tournaments). Still its another peculiar English thing of writing off an international football tournament as unimportant, which we also do with the Nations League when other much more decorated nations do take them seriously and celebrate winning them. I could understand the mentality we have to "lesser" tournaments if we had 6 world cups and 5 euros in the trophy cabinet but i'm always puzzled to see how as a nation we seem to feel ourselves above things like the Olympics and Nations League when we have such precious little success in football. I mean gold medalists Spain take it very, very seriously (likewise the Nations League) and have been so much more successful than us over the last 16 years, and here we are denigrating these tournaments as unimportant when we've won sweet FA for coming up to 60 years
What's to care about when we've had the Euros and Copa America this summer? It's a major drop off after those and isn't really a proper tournament with it being under 23s but three arbitrary over-age players. The Olympics is supposed to be the best of the best, not a B-team spectacular - it's only included to try to up viewing figures. Caring about it is like being bothered about the Community Shield or the Confederations Cup - it's just a waste of space in the already over-crowded calendar.
I think we should be taking the nations league seriously, the Olympics is still a youth tournament at the end of the day, (so is below the World Cup, Euros, Copa and Nations League) it’s about as important as the U20 World Cup which we’ve won recently.