When their eventual conquerors Japan edged out Holland with a goal in each half in Vancouver last week, England’s already quarter-final bound players should have had further cause for celebration. It left Mark Sampson’s squad as one of only three European sides remaining in the competition, alongside France and Germany, and, as such, should have clinched qualification for next summer’s Olympics in Rio.
With memories of London 2012 and beating Brazil at Wembley in front of more than 70,000 fans still fresh in the minds of some in the squad, including Karen Carney, and exciting young talents such as Fran Kirby since added to the mix, what a glorious bonus that could have been from a tournament that should prove a tipping point for the game.
Prior to Japan’s match against Holland in Canada, the German tabloid Bild caught the mood with a picture of their players beneath the headline “Danke, England” – with four European teams remaining and the Football Association having already abandoned plans to enter a team in Rio, they knew qualification was secure.
Unlike the men’s game, the Olympics is seen as on a par with the World Cup in women’s football. Denying British women the opportunity to play in it at such a crucial time for the sport’s development is looking more and more myopic with each passing day.
Is the women’s game in the UK so well developed, so strong at the grassroots, so popular with fans, so embedded in schools, that it can afford to pass up the chance of one of the greatest shop windows it will ever have? Of course not. On the contrary, it is at a crucial phase in its development.
To pass on the opportunity to play in Brazil – the home of the beautiful game, in a country where women’s football is taken seriously, in front of passionate crowds, as part of a British Olympic team, with all that entails – starts to feel like an act of vandalism.
The arguments around a men’s team – as played out in the runup to London 2012 – are different and more contentious. For many reasons, from fixture congestion to the conflicted feelings of some fans, there are as many arguments against as for. That is just not the case when it comes to the women’s game, where it is virtually impossible to find anyone who is against the idea on principle.
The reason we have ended up here is because of, as so often, the shortsighted and internecine nature of football politics and power games as played out by grey men in grey suits. The FA was keen to put a team forward for both the women’s and men’s competitions. With various levels of vigour, the idea was rejected by the other home nations who continue to maintain that to play in a joint team at the Olympics could, over time, undermine the sovereignty of the individual home nations.
If there was to be no men’s team on principle, they railed, there could be no women’s side either. As it turned out, the men would not have qualified anyway because of the limp performance of Gareth Southgate’s England Under-21 side in the Czech Republic.
Obviously, it is hard to take much of what Fifa says seriously but, for what it’s worth, there have been repeated assurances from Zurich, both verbal and written, that playing a British side in the Olympics would not undermine the case for separate national teams elsewhere.
Sometimes another rationale is put forward, that it would threaten the “special privileges” enjoyed by the home nations at Fifa – a guaranteed seat on the executive committee and a place on the Ifab board that codifies the laws of the game.
Those privileges are being steadily whittled away in any case and should arguably be voluntarily surrendered if we are to take the moral high ground in the debate on Fifa reform.
It is hard not to conclude that the most vociferous reaction, from the Football Association of Wales chairman, Trefor Lloyd-Hughes, was not somehow bound up in his personal disappointment at being passed over for the Fifa executive committee in favour of the English FA’s favoured candidate David Gill.
Under the previous Buggins’ turn formula it would have been time for a Welsh representative but under a new system in which Uefa votes on which candidate should take the seat Gill jumped the queue – only to resign anyway when Blatter was re-elected.
Lloyd-Hughes, a retired ambulance driver from Anglesey, was furious at what he saw as English arrogance and was “livid” when he heard about the Team GB plans. Some of the resentment felt by the FAs in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland towards England is justified. There can be a tendency towards loftily deciding what is right for all four.
However, to let such petty politicking and confusing internal rows get in the way of the development of a sport that should be at the forefront of faltering efforts to deliver a legacy from the London Olympics, and the thorny issue of engaging teenage girls in sport is appalling. Surely the obvious compromise was to enter a women’s side and leave the more contentious issue of the men for another day?
Sampson’s side, who visibly grew throughout the tournament, will instead be denied the opportunity to capitalise on that momentum – for themselves and their sport – in Rio. For the handful of players from the other home nations who would have been in contention for a place in the squad, the chance to play in an Olympics on the world stage is gone – probably for good.
The Women’s Super League is now well established but has been a slow burn in terms of building attendances. Yet healthy audiences for England’s World Cup matches on the BBC, despite the time difference, have shown the appetite is there on the big occasion.
To willingly turn down the opportunity to capitalise on that next summer and aim for Olympic gold is a decision that can only have the rest of the world shaking their heads and wondering, not for the first time, at the ways of our funny little island.
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