Team GB 2012 Olympics Who to Pick

leposean

As we all know the 2012 Olympics like most previous features a football Tournament. For the first time in history (AFAIK) Great Britain will enter a team.

Although the FA's on Wales, Scotland and N.Ireland don't want them to, some players from these associations have declared themselves available, most notably Gareth Bale, Aaron Ramsey and Craig Bellamy.

For the tournament, Team GB Manager Stuart Pearse must select a squad of just 18 players. 2 of which much be goalkeepers and at least 15 must be under the age of 23 on January 1st 2012.

Pearse has already stated anyone going to Euro 2012 will not be brought to the Olympics.

So who is he going to pick.
Goalkeepers
1.Jason Steele - Middlesborough
12. Ben Amos - Manchester United

Defenders
2.Kyle Walker - Tottenham Hotspur
3.Kieron Gibbs - Arsenal
5.Phil Jones - Manchester United
6.Johnny Evans (over 23) - Manchester United
14.Martin Kelly - Liverpool
15.Steven Caulker - Swansea City

Midfielders
4.Aaron Ramsey - Arsenal
7.David Beckham (over 23) - LA Galaxy
8.Jordan Henderson - Liverpool
10.Gareth Bale - Tottenham Hotspur
11.Ryan Giggs (over 23) - Manchester United
16.Jack Rodwell - Everton

Forwards
9.Andy Carroll - Liverpool
17.Nathan Delfouneso - Aston Villa
18.Danny Welbeck - Manchester United

Other Options
Over 23's
Rio Ferdinand
Craig Bellamy
Paul Robinson
Paul Scholes
Jamie Carragher
Darren Bent (may not make Euro's due to injury)

U23
Joe Bennett
Danny Rose
John Flanaghan
Adam Smith
Ross Barkley
Dan Gosling
Jack Wilshire (if not selected for Euro 2012)
Lee Cattermole
Barry Banan
Alex Nimley
Alex Olaide Chamberlain (if not selected for Euro 2012)

applehunter

What about the Pale?

Paul Tergat

No United players will be going imo and I would expect Jones and Welbeck to go to the Euros

dreamers75

hhhaha Andy Carroll....its not the special olympics.


Nigeria will win it prolly beating a south american team in the final.

MickySticks

dreamers75 wrote: »

hhhaha Andy Carroll....its not the special olympics.

Heh

Nalz

dreamers75 wrote: »

hhhaha Andy Carroll....its not the special olympics.

It could do him the world of good to be fair. Needs a run in a side imo and he might regain some form.

leposean

Im a Liverpool fan and I wouldn't let Carroll near the team but I thik the FA will have a word with Pearse n get him there cause they seem to want him and Rooney for the future. The more I think about it I think Darren Bent will miss the Euros n go with team GB

Kiwi_knock

I would be surprised if Jack Butland is not one of the keepers selected. He is favoured by Pearce, and is starting ahead of Amos and Steele for the Under 21s. Also tipped to be the long term challenger to Hart so fully expect him to be in the squad and also think he will be Number 1.

Liam O

James Forrest off Celtic will be going.

eagle eye

Jason Lowe is likely to be included I think. He is playing right full for Blackburn at the minute but is a central midfielder and has been part of the underage teams all the way up so far.

CSF

Liam O wrote: »

James Forrest off Celtic will be going.

This will be funny.

Guy:Incognito

Robbie Keane.

leposean wrote: »

Other Options
Over 23's
Rio Ferdinand
Craig Bellamy
Paul Robinson
Paul Scholes
Jamie Carragher
Darren Bent (may not make Euro's due to injury)

Cant see a situation where either Scholes or Carragher would be approached, nevermind actually ending up in the squad.

ColeTrain

CSF wrote: »

This will be funny.

Please explain how this would be funny?
G'lad.

Oranage2

Trilla wrote: »

It could do him the world of good to be fair. Needs a run in a side imo and he might regain some form.

Doubt he'd even be picked for the GB team.

dannydiamond

OP didn't list Charlie Adam as a possible candidate for selection, he'd almost certainly be picked for the squad even though he's sh1t.

dreamers75

dannydiamond wrote: »

OP didn't list Charlie Adam as a possible candidate for selection, he'd almost certainly be picked for the squad even though he's sh1t.

Smashing player just not fit enough to be a professional darts player. Hundreds like him in the LSL and amateur leagues. Seriously think hes a decent player just incapable of being fitter than a pub team player.

dannydiamond

dreamers75 wrote: »

Smashing player just not fit enough to be a professional darts player. Hundreds like him in the LSL and amateur leagues. Seriously think hes a decent player just incapable of being fitter than a pub team player.

Whatever about him not being fit, he's lazy and his decision making is appalling.

A 'smashing player' he is not.

dreamers75

dannydiamond wrote: »

Whatever about him not being fit, he's lazy and his decision making is appalling.

A 'smashing player' he is not.

Imo hes a proper footballer, touch and technique. mad he gets a game for a EPL club.

Fr Tod Umptious

Op, GB won football gold in 1908 and 1912, I think that was the last time they entered a team

losthorizon

If theres a Team GB doesnt this open the way to an All- Ireland Football team in future olympics? Constitutionally, NI isnt part of GB.

The Olympic council of Ireland covers the whole island and many of the teams taking part are All Ireland teams.

leposean

dannydiamond wrote: »

OP didn't list Charlie Adam as a possible candidate for selection, he'd almost certainly be picked for the squad even though he's sh1t.

Reason I didn't list Adam along with Darren Flethcher, Kenny Miller and Alan Hutton who have all declared they will not take up an offer to represent Team GB

leposean

losthorizon wrote: »

If theres a Team GB doesnt this open the way to an All- Ireland Football team in future olympics? Constitutionally, NI isnt part of GB.

The Olympic council of Ireland covers the whole island and many of the teams taking part are All Ireland teams.

Don;t ask me how but no apparently it does not. Johnny Evans has already said he'd represent Team GB

DB10

Can Evans actually do that though?

ArmaniJeanss

dreamers75 wrote: »

Nigeria will win it prolly beating a south american team in the final.

You are drawing dead with Nigeria, didn't qualify.
****
No Argentina either, would have been nice to see Messi at a tournament in England.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_at_the_2012_Summer_Olympics_%E2%80%93_Men%27s_tournament

Magill

Pretty sure its GB + N.Ireland ?

N.Irish athletes can play for Ireland or the GB team iirc.

TaosHum

Magill wrote: »

Pretty sure its GB + N.Ireland ?

N.Irish athletes can play for Ireland or the GB team iirc.

Thats it. All athletes have the option to represent either one. So on the question of Norn Iron players representing an all Irish team, it would basically be the current Republic of Ireland squad, as I'm sure if players wanted to play for Ireland, they would just declare for the Republic in the 1st place.

SirDelboy18

Welbeck will certainly go to the Euros. Jones probably will too, Ferdinand might, Kyle Walker might too. Too difficult to tell at this early stage.

leposean

I think for the Euro's they will take Johnson, Smalling, Ferdinand, Terry, Cahill, Lescott, Baines, Cole. As good as Jones is Terry, Ferdinand, Lescott and Cahill are ahead of him in the pecking order and after that your probably looking at Ledley King possibly and Jags. He may take him as an all round cover player for midfield also but there you have Lampard, Gerrard, Wilshire, Parker, Barry, Milner as pretty much dead certs. Thats 17 with that lot and the 3 keepers. Then Welbeck, Rooney, Downing, Walcott, Young plus another centre forward seen as Bent probably wont make it.

When you look at that lot theres not really anyone there you could drop to take Jones to the Euro's so you would take him to the Olympics and if Beckham isn't playing make him Captain

That_Guy

I know he's young and has only made a handful of sub appearances for us but Shane Ferguson could be a useful option.

kitakyushu

ArmaniJeanss wrote: »

You are drawing dead with Nigeria, didn't qualify.
****
No Argentina either, would have been nice to see Messi at a tournament in England.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_at_the_2012_Summer_Olympics_%E2%80%93_Men%27s_tournament

I'd suspect Messi wouldn't have appeared anyway had Argentina qualified for 2012. Barca originally refused to release Messi for the 2008 Olympics and it was only Guardiola who stepped in late and helped Messi to fulfill his ambition to play.

Four years on and Messi's worth ten times as much as a player, so I can't see Barca being any more enthusiastic about releasing him than they were four years ago. Add to this that Messi has now had his olympic experience and has won gold so he's basically achieved all that competition has to offer.

losthorizon

Fr Tod Umptious wrote: »

Op, GB won football gold in 1908 and 1912, I think that was the last time they entered a team

WE lost to them in qualifiers twice in the 60s apparently!


This is from an old programme

The Real First Time

Ireland’s first appearance in the finals of a major football tournament, a shock 1-0 win for starters on a glorious summer Sunday afternoon only to be cruelly robbed of a semi final place by the Dutch. We walked tall all week. Our hearts burned with pride. I rang home to discover my late grandmother had watched the first football game of her life. She had cried her eyes out. Fourteen years on it still means a lot. 13,000 of us were there, tens of thousands more claim to have been there yet we all lie. My grandmother may well have cried her eyes out when Ireland won the opening game of their first major football tournament but it would have been pure coincidence because she was just out of nappies. There weren’t 13,000 fans baying for the final whistle (84 minutes early). There weren’t millions more screaming at TV sets. 500,000 did not line the streets to welcome home our heroes. Only 500 people squeezed into the Stade de Colombes. The nation didn’t find out for hours. The heroes are surely long dead and sadly long forgotten. Euro 88 was a great adventure but the team that went to the Olympic Games of 1924 were surely the real pioneers of Irish football. The football tournament was played a couple of months before the real games and is now considered to be the world’s first major International tournament. It was a forerunner to the World Cup 6 years later. Jules Rimet was the organiser. 22 nations took part including Uruguay, U.S.A., Egypt, Turkey and Estonia. Uruguay emerged triumphant but only Ireland from these islands participated. A 1-0 victory over Bulgaria was followed by a 2-1 defeat by Holland in extra time.

Only 16 of the 22 man squad actually made the 2 day overland journey to Paris along with trainer Charlie Harris. The fledgling Irish Free State was just recovering from a Civil war and this was the first time that the new Irish tricolour was raised at a sporting occasion. We played in blue shirts. Paddy Duncan of St James’s Gate scored the only goal to defeat Bulgaria while a Frank Ghent equaliser was not enough to deny Holland who survived a ropey second half to steal it in extra time. Frank Ghent was not actually selected for the Bulgaria game but his inclusion meant that 5 of the cup winning Athlone Town side represented Ireland in the quarter finals. Surely we’ll never see that again. Contemporary reports mention that the Irish and Dutch partied together long into the night. If it was half as good as memorable nights in Gelsenkirchen, Palermo, Liverpool, Dublin and Orlando then it must have been quite a party.

These games are now classed as amateur Internationals by the F.A.I. They were certainly listed as full Internationals up until at least the early 1940’s when Thomas P Walsh published the first history of Irish football. The 1924 tournament does however merit a few paragraphs in Peter Byrne’s excellent history of the F.A.I. The 75th anniversary of this tournament passed by unremarked.

Heres the squad for the Irish team that made the 1948 Olympics. Most of the Players are from Bohs as they were strictly amateur at the time I think

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_at_the_1948_Summer_Olympics_%E2%80%93_Men%27s_team_squads#.C2.A0Republic_of_Ireland


If anyone can remember the first time they left in professional players into the olmypics it was decided that a LOI would be selected to represent Ireland. I think it was the Late 80's/ early90s. Im a Cork City fan so I remember Dave Barry getting capped but we had a really tough group along with Spain, France and some other tough nuts. Maybe somebody has some info on this?

Paully D

I'd be surprised if Frazier Campbell didn't make the squad given the fact they've got him to be the face of the marketing campaign for the jersey (which is horrendous):

LuckyLloyd

Squad composition will be heavily influenced by Euro 2012 selection. You can start properly guessing at that point.

Guy:Incognito

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

Squad composition will be heavily influenced by Euro 2012 selection. You can start properly guessing at that point.

When do the squads for the Euros have to be in? Couple of weeks beforehand isnt it?

Big Pussy Bonpensiero

kitakyushu wrote: »

I'd suspect Messi wouldn't have appeared anyway had Argentina qualified for 2012. Barca originally refused to release Messi for the 2008 Olympics and it was only Guardiola who stepped in late and helped Messi to fulfill his ambition to play.

Four years on and Messi's worth ten times as much as a player, so I can't see Barca being any more enthusiastic about releasing him than they were four years ago. Add to this that Messi has now had his olympic experience and has won gold so he's basically achieved all that competition has to offer.

AFAIK the AFA brought Barca to court and Messi was free to play anyways. Guardiola simply gave Messi his blessing. I stand to be corrected though.

TaosHum

Paully D wrote: »

I'd be surprised if Frazier Campbell didn't make the squad given the fact they've got him to be the face of the marketing campaign for the jersey (which is horrendous):

I thought that this was the team GB kit?

leposean

I'm confused as well cause Bale n Ramsey have been everywhere with that jersey. Campbell will defo be going

ArmaniJeanss

kitakyushu wrote: »

I'd suspect Messi wouldn't have appeared anyway had Argentina qualified for 2012. Barca originally refused to release Messi for the 2008 Olympics and it was only Guardiola who stepped in late and helped Messi to fulfill his ambition to play.

Four years on and Messi's worth ten times as much as a player, so I can't see Barca being any more enthusiastic about releasing him than they were four years ago. Add to this that Messi has now had his olympic experience and has won gold so he's basically achieved all that competition has to offer.

There was never an issue with Barca refusing Messi's release for the 2008 Olympics.
They took a court case to confirm whether or not they were obliged to release him and other players. But it was made clear all along that regardless of the outcome of the case (which as we know they won) he would be released.

As I understand it his position in the club is so strong that if he wanted to play in 2012 (if they'd qualified) that it would again be his decision and Barca wouldn't stand in his way. Moot point anyway as they haven't qualified, though I guess they'll be trying harder to qualify for the Rio in 2016.

jimjimjimmy

leposean wrote: »

I'm confused as well cause Bale n Ramsey have been everywhere with that jersey. Campbell will defo be going

The Bale and Ramsey one was called a supporters shirt. Reckon it's just something they knocked together to sell until they had the actual one ready.

leposean

So the 3 over age players have been announced. Bellamy, Giggs, Richards.

Thats leaves 13 outfield options to be filled by the u23 players and 2 keepers.

I think I read somewhere that despite going to the Euro's Jack Butland will be the number 1 and would assume Ben Amos would be the reserve player.

Hugely surprised Beckham didn't get picked but was the right footballing decision. More so at the fact that he is taking Richards who he must be picking as a centre back as it would make very little sense to not pick Kyle Walker at right back as he has been brilliant all season. If he wanted an overage defensive player instead of a creative midfielder there were much more obvious and probably better options. Ferdinand being the number 1. Johnny Evans to include the Northern Irish as I'm not sure there will be any N.Irish good enough other than him. Carragher was also someone I thought was in with a shout.

I can see the team being
1.Hart
2.Walker 6.Richards 5.Smalling 3.Gibbs

4.Rodwell 10.Ramsey
7.Bale 11.Giggs 8.Bellamy

9.Campbell

Giggsy11

leposean wrote: »

So the 3 over age players have been announced. Bellamy, Giggs, Richards.

Thats leaves 13 outfield options to be filled by the u23 players and 2 keepers.

I think I read somewhere that despite going to the Euro's Jack Butland will be the number 1 and would assume Ben Amos would be the reserve player.

Hugely surprised Beckham didn't get picked but was the right footballing decision. More so at the fact that he is taking Richards who he must be picking as a centre back as it would make very little sense to not pick Kyle Walker at right back as he has been brilliant all season. If he wanted an overage defensive player instead of a creative midfielder there were much more obvious and probably better options. Ferdinand being the number 1. Johnny Evans to include the Northern Irish as I'm not sure there will be any N.Irish good enough other than him. Carragher was also someone I thought was in with a shout.

I can see the team being
1.Hart
2.Walker 6.Richards 5.Smalling 3.Gibbs

4.Rodwell 10.Ramsey
7.Bale 11.Giggs 8.Bellamy

9.Campbell

I think Rodwell is ruled out and Campbell, Hart are 24 and 25 years old, so it will be 5 over age players.

ceegee

leposean wrote: »

So the 3 over age players have been announced. Bellamy, Giggs, Richards.

Thats leaves 13 outfield options to be filled by the u23 players and 2 keepers.

I think I read somewhere that despite going to the Euro's Jack Butland will be the number 1 and would assume Ben Amos would be the reserve player.

Hugely surprised Beckham didn't get picked but was the right footballing decision. More so at the fact that he is taking Richards who he must be picking as a centre back as it would make very little sense to not pick Kyle Walker at right back as he has been brilliant all season. If he wanted an overage defensive player instead of a creative midfielder there were much more obvious and probably better options. Ferdinand being the number 1. Johnny Evans to include the Northern Irish as I'm not sure there will be any N.Irish good enough other than him. Carragher was also someone I thought was in with a shout.

I can see the team being
1.Hart
2.Walker 6.Richards 5.Smalling 3.Gibbs

4.Rodwell 10.Ramsey
7.Bale 11.Giggs 8.Bellamy

9.Campbell

Hart's not eligible (and cant see many player from the euro's being picked)

leposean

ceegee wrote: »

Hart's not eligible (and cant see many player from the euro's being picked)

Don't know why I wrote Hart haha, I meant Butland. Is Campbell not u23? I think he is

NEDDURC

I think it'll be something like below, presuming Walker is out -

Butland,

Richards, Smalling, Evans, Bertrand,

Sturridge, Giggs, Ramsey, Bale,

Bellamy, Rhodes (token scottish)

Subs: Scot Sinclair, Campbell, Rose, Gibbs, Caulker, Wickham, Rodwell if fit.

Rekop dog

Uruguay will crush Britain in that group.

SirDelboy18

Fergie banned anyone (from United obv) but Giggs taking part. Anyone who defies that will do so at their own peril.

leposean

NEDDURC wrote: »

I think it'll be something like below, presuming Walker is out -

Butland,

Richards, Smalling, Evans, Bertrand,

Sturridge, Giggs, Ramsey, Bale,

Bellamy, Rhodes (token scottish)

Subs: Scot Sinclair, Campbell, Rose, Gibbs, Caulker, Wickham, Rodwell if fit.

If Evans is Jonny Evans you have 4 overage players

Chucky the tree

SirDelboy18 wrote: »

Fergie banned anyone (from United obv) but Giggs taking part. Anyone who defies that will do so at their own peril.

Fergie can't stop anyone under 23 going. Players who are picked have to go unless injured.

NEDDURC

leposean wrote: »

If Evans is Jonny Evans you have 4 overage players

Good point, didn't check his age (24) thought I heard him mentioned as a possibility but presumed he was under 23. I guess it was to get a NI player in there which doesn't look likely now.

Beefy78

Gutted that Becks won't be going. I love that guy.

Big Pussy Bonpensiero

Can't see them taking 2 players from the Spurs starting XI.