Olympic hopes dashed by FIFA

Finishing as Europes third best team at the Football World Cup should have been enough to see Great Britain field a team in the Women's footbal competition at the Beijing Olympics.

A quarter-final defeat to the United States was disappointing but the decision to blow for Women's football in Great Britain.

The team did what was required on the field. The suits at the BOA and the FA need to do what is required off the field to ensure that British teams are not excluded again!

Women's Football

Great Britain have never competed in the Football competition at the Olympics. But, this year the team qualified for the World Cup for the first time since 1995.

Form

England qualified for the FIFA Women's World Cup from Group 5, ahead of France, Holland, Austria and Hungary, and have been put into the top rank of seeds.

Olympic Qualification

The 3 best ranked European teams at the FIFA Women's World Cup will qualify for Beijing. The FIFA Women's World Cup 2007 will be held in China from September 10-30 2007. England are competing against Norway, Sweden, Germany and Denmark for the coverted Olympic place.


The Women's Olympic Tournament is a 12 team competition with the remaing teams being

• Host nation China
• United States and Canada (who qualified at the 2006 CONCACAF (Central America) Women's Gold Cup in November 19-26, 2006)
• two teams from the AFC (Asia) Preliminary Competition to be held in Feb 2007
• one team from the CAF (Africa) Preliminary Competition held between Oct 2006 - Mar 2008
• one team from the CONMEBOL (South America) Preliminary Competition to be held in February 2008
• one team from the OFC (Oceania) Preliminary Competition to be held March 23-30, 2008
• the final team will come from a special CAF-CONMEBOL Play-off.

A Great Britain Football Team in Beijing?

There has been a lot of fuss about the entering of a football team for London 2012, but there is a very real possibility that England will secure a place for Great Britain at Beijing 2008. But, will the Football Associations put aside their differences to enable the team to play?

Form

England qualified, for the playoffs, from Group 8 ahead of Switzerland and Moldova. In the palyoff, England beat Germany to qualify for the UEFA European U-21 Championship.

Qualification

In October, England, Italy, Portugal, Serbia, the Czech Republic, Belgium and Israel teams made it through the UEFA European U-21 Championship play-off stage, to join hosts and defending champions the Netherlands in the UEFA European U-21 Championship. The top four teams in the finals will qualify for Beijing 2008. The competition is to be held between 10 and 23 June 2007.

The Men's Olympic Football is a 16 team competition. The remainder of the teams will come from:

Asia (AFC): 4 teams will qualify – including host nation China PR
Africa (CAF): 3 teams will qualify
North and Central America (CONCACAF): 2 teams will qualify
South America (CONMEBOL): 2 teams will qualify
Oceania (OFC): 1 team will qualify

What to Watch

For us, Football is not a major Olympic sport. We may look to get tickets for a preliminary game, but there are much better opportunities to see medals during the final days. Football is a passion, and we do watch it on the television, but there are better opportunities to see this sport live. I suspect that he Chinese will fill every ground.