Today the Olympics begins in China, and every Olympics I wish that we in the UK had a team to support in the Olympics, but no team has been entered since 1972 on the grounds that if we competed as the UK in the Olympics, they might make the home nations compete as the UK in the World Cup. In four years time the Olympics is coming to London, and the pressure is on the hosts to enter a team. The Scottish, Northern Irish and Welsh Football Associations have all voiced their opposition to joining up with the team (England) that they usually wouldn’t cheer for unless they were playing a Nazi War criminals XI, but the British Olympic Association has told them to go fuck themselves with a chainsaw and has defiantly stated it’s going to enter a team anyway. Thus the UK will probably enter a team for the London 2012 football tournament. Who will be in that team in four years time is anybody’s guess, as nobody knows which young players will have made the big time, and which will be languishing in the lower leagues, but this is the team that I personally would pick for Beijing if we were allowed to enter. Olympic rules limit each squad to nineteen players, only three of which can be over 23.   

UK Olympic Football Squad 2008

Goalkeepers

Wayne Hennessey, West Brom, Wales

Scott Carson, West Brom, England

Defenders 

Rio Ferdinand, Manchester United, England

David Wheater, Middlesboro, England

Alan Hutton, Tottenham Hotspurs, Scotland 

Micah Richards, Manchester City, England

Glen Johnson, Portsmouth, England

Gareth Bale, Tottenham Hotspurs, Wales

Midfielders

Tom Huddlestone, Tottenham Hotspurs, England

Steven Davis, Fulham, Northern Ireland

Steven Gerrard, Liverpool, England (Captain)

David Bentley, Blackburn, England

Stuart Downing, Middlesboro, England

Ashley Young, Aston Villa England

Forwards 

Wayne Rooney, Manchester United, England

Jermaine Defoe, Portsmouth, England

Theo Walcott, Arsenal, England

Gabriel Agbonlahor, Aston Villa 

Picking the three overage players in the squad posed the toughest choice, with the Lampard / Gerrard debate posing the problem so failiar to so many England fans. In the end I went for Gerrard because of his leadership skills. No doubt everyone will think their home nation deserved more players, and the healthy rivalry between the home nations is one of the reasons why they treasure so much their footballing independence. Long may this independence reign, but for the football fans sake, please let the Olympics be one exception to the rule

Frank Lampard – the ultimate badge kisser 

Why is it that players chose to kiss the badge after a goal?  We presume to show affection for the club they play for, but if this be the case, why is it almost always the case that the players that kiss the badge are often at another club only months later?

Frank Lampard, earning ₤115,000 a week at Chelsea, spent most of last season kissing his club’s crest after every time that, usually on the 10^th attempt of the afternoon, one of his 25-yard shots trickled into the net after three deflections. But off the pitch he refused to sign a deal for the pitiful sum of ₤130,000 a week, a deal which would have lasted him until the age of 34, when most players, particularly in his position, are well past their best. He now looks set to join his old master Jose Mourinho at Inter Milan, and whether he goes this summer or next doesn’t detract from the fact that he is a classic example of this new phenomenon. 

A few years back, Wayne Rooney, a born and bred Evertonian who grew up idolizing Duncan Ferguson, unveiled in a goal celebration a shirt that said “once a blue, always a blue. Only a few months later he joined Manchester United, and upon scoring against his old club had the cheek to kiss the badge of a club whose emblem used to read “Manchester United Football Club”, but has now dropped the last two words of that slogan to signify that it is now more business than football team. When Wayne Rooney kissed his Manchester United badge after scoring against Everton, it was more a two-fingered salute to the people he used to call his own. He wasn’t saluting his team, he was glorifying himself, and he may as well have kissed a picture of his own unsightly appearance, or, if he was flexible enough, performed the kind of act on himself that Paris Hilton is famous for.Alan Smith is another famous badge kisser, a player who loved Leeds so much, he left for their biggest rivals. Add to this odious list Dwight Yorke when at Aston Villa, Teddy Sheringham before leaving Spurs for Manchester, and then Teddy Sheringham before leaving Manchester Untied for Spurs. It has got to the point where the act of planting a pecker on the club crest purveys the opposite message to the one that is presumably meant. 

For me a player shows his loyalty to his club through his actions, through playing for his club for a number of years and showing loyalty and affection for the team even after they retire or leave, not by giving a meaningless peck on a piece of fabric. If Frank loved his club so much he would have put pen to paper as well as his lips to his shirt. Alan Shearer never kissed his badge after scoring a goal for his beloved Newcastle, choosing instead to raise his arm in his trade-mark celebration. But he played for his team for 10 years when he could have earnt more success and money elsewhere. That is an example of a player who really loves their team. 

I understand, but don’t agree with, the arguments that it is understandable for a player to move on purely for bigger wages because they have short careers, or because in a capitalist society they deserve any money that someone is willing to pay them, but if that be the case that their only loyalty should be to themselves, then would the modern footballer please stop trying to convince us otherwise. It is an insult to the fans at the stadium watching them, fans that would play for free for their team given half the chance.Instead of kissing the badge, I recommend that unless they would not swap their shirt for a bigger salary, players should kiss the mirror after scoring a goal.

 In this blog I aim to answer the eternal question posed in pub debates across the land. Just how many players would have to be injured before Titus Bramble, football's clumsiest defender, earned himself an England cap? First of all we have to consider that despite being famous for continually making hilarious gaffes like this.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqLaSZxX64A&feature=related

And this   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEbssmoJS4c

and this little beauty here  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY0aRU9HD9k 

he is still a premiership footballer, better than I or probably anyone reading this, and did earn 10 caps for England's under-21s team. nonetheless I reckon the following 22 players are all ahead of Titus in the pecking order for England’s centre-back position. Seeing as it is usually the case that England play with two centre backs, we can assume that 21 of the following 22 men would have to be injured 

John Terry, Rio Ferdinand, Joleon Lescott, Micah Richards, Johnathan Woodgate, David Wheater, Sol Campbell , Wes Brown  Michael Dawson, Nedim Onouha, Matthew Upson, Ledley King (Always injured anyways, but could come back for one game like in the Carling Cup Final), Anton Ferdinand, Justin Hoyte, Zat Knight, Garry Neville (can play CB), Phil Neville, Linvoy Primus, Curtis Davies, Jlloyd Samuel, Steven Taylor and finally Jamie Carragher

Carragher is of course retired from international football, but I figure that after about 20 players being injured, a public campaign would be so great for Carra to return, there’d be front page headlines in the red-top tabloids.

I would at this stage like to point out that I have not simply named every English centre-back I can, and have missed out the following, who I believe Titus is probably ahead of in Capello’s thinking;

Anthony Gardner

Glen Johnson (more of a right back, and would be likely to play there if Neville and Richards were injured)

Andy Todd

Gary Cahill

Paul Konchesky

Me

Your mum

Tony Adams

Bobby Moore  

But fear not Titus, for although England has plenty of centre-backs, they seem to be lacking up front. If you can produce this on a regular basis, there is still hope

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9eLZ8UxPTs&NR=1  

Titus - wasted striker   Bobby Moore - presently unavailable

Sepp Blatter has recently been perusing the idea of limiting the amount of foreign players in a team. His proposal is to create the complete opposite of a meritocracy, where the best rise to the top regardless of race, religion and country of origin. Blatter has always been a man who thinks of 50 Ideas a day, 51 of which are bad. Such as when he wanted to split the game into quarters just to appease the American market, or when he proposed that the women’s game should be played in underwear to attract more viewers and sponsorship.

The beautiful thing about football is that it is fair. An untalented singer can reach the top with a good agent, and untalented actress can become a multi millionaire simply because of her bra-size, and even a complete imbecile can become president of the United States of America with the right family connections.

Football is not like this. Football is just. The best players reach the top regardless of whether their skin colour, country of origin, family history, religion, hair colour or penis size. Some players may be slightly overrated, underrated, lucky or unlucky. Some are born in the right circumstances to make a quality player, but there are probably not many potential world player of the year winners playing in the lower leagues, and there are undoubtedly no players in the premiership that cannot be described as talented and no players in the top level of football in any country who have not been training their whole lives to reach that level. The extensive scouting networks of the top teams means that if you are good enough, you will sooner or later be noticed, and if you are bad enough, you will be found out. Even the players often lambasted as awful and overrated, such as Titus Bramble or Ade Akinbiye, were probably the best in their schools, and played the game for hours on end every day in their youth in order to make the top.

Football also gives people from the poorest countries in the world a chance to make a decent living for themselves, but Blatter’s plans will change all of this. Under Blatter’s plan players such as Didier Drogba and Kolo Toure would be left to make their livings in their own countries' leagues, a stage nowhere near big enough for their talents.

I was born in north London, grew up within walking distance of Highbury and have supported Arsenal all my life. Do I deserve to play for the club more than foreign players like Emanuelle Adebayor? No, because I have not the ability required.