UNTOLD ARSENAL » Blog Archive » 2012 Olympics bad news for Arsenal
The next Olympics (they are being held in London – but maybe you knew that) will cause Arsenal much bigger headaches than those that have just been held in China.
This time we only lost Song. Looking at the number of youngsters coming through the chances are that we are going to be decimated in 2012.
Olympic football is a dreadful mess of screwed up stupid regulations. England, Scotland, Wales and N Ireland are not allowed to enter because they are not “countries” – although the British Virgin Islands can enter if they wish. Football is also the only sport where the Olympics puts in its own artificial age limit – it is an under 23 tournament with a couple of older players allowed.
However because the Olympics are being held in London, the Olympics association has told “Team GB” as we now have to call our country, that it has to enter a football team.
Scotland, Wales and N Ireland have told the committee to stuff themselves – after all the only impact the Olympics has on them is that they have to pay for it. So it is going to be an England team playing as a GB team, and it is going to be full of young players.
And guess where all the young players are going… Arsenal of course.
So Jack Wilshere is going to play – along with other members of the team now coming through. Theo might be there as captain.
The only up-side is that the government is demanding that the EPL should put the start of the EPL season back to the end of August, so that it doesn’t clash with the Olympics. Which might be good, because otherwise, if England were to qualify for the next European Championship we could have players playing in one tournament, and then another.
Mind you, according to most of the blogs around at the moment, Arsenal will be a League Two team by then because of the ineptitude of our manager, so maybe we won’t even notice.